negotiations in the past. another deal with the national liberation army is still in the works as well but this accord is a serious step for a generation arguably two that has only known war. let's hope this does end as well as it appears it might. that's all for tonight. we'll be back tomorrow with more "mtp daily." "with all due respect" starts right now. i'm alex wagner. >> i'm john heilemann. "with all due respect" to donald trump, we heard about your minnesota ballot troubles and you should have known. lot of weird stuff happens up there. oh, yeah. you betcha. we have a good show for you tonight. okay. after a week of being hammered

over her family foundation, hillary clinton was back on offense today, calling b.s. on donald trump's latest efforts to soften his rhetoric and reach out to minority voters. this afternoon in reno, nevada the democratic nominee devoted her speech to reminding the world of trump' unseemliest remarks and retweets dubbing him a hero of the alt-right. >> from the start, donald trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. he is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the republican party. let's not forget that trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called birthers. he promoted the racist lie that president obama is not really an american citizen. the de facto merger between

breitbart and the trump campaign represents a landmark achievement for this group. a fringe element that has effectively taken over the republican party. and this is part of a broader story. the rising tide of hard line right wing nationalism around the world. no one should have any illusions about what's really going on re. the names m have changed, racists now call themselves racialists. white supremacists now call themselves white nationalists. the paranoid fringe now calls itself alt-right. but the hate burns just as bright. this is a moment of reckoning for every republican dismayed that the party of lincoln has become the party of trump. >> a few hours before that, the clinton campaign released this incendiary web video that features a ku klux klan wizard praising the republican nominee. >> the reason a lot of klan

members like donald trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in. donald trump will be best for the job. >> for president? >> yeah. >> i'm a farmer and white nationalist. support donald trump. >> sending out all the illegals, building a wall and a moratorium on islamic immigration. that's very appealing to a lot of ordinary white people. >> donald trump himself was holding a roundtable with minority groups this morning in new york when that video dropped. later, he responded at a rally in manchester, new hampshire. >> hillary clinton is going to try and accuse this campaign and all of you and the millions of decent americans who support this campaign, your campaign, of being racists which we're not. to hillary clinton and her donors and advisers, pushing her to spread smears and her lies about decent people, shame on

you. >> the trump campaign also put out a statement saying quote, hillary clinton's attempt to delete the single worst week of her political career isn't going to work. alex, who is winning this today? >> i got to give it to clinton just by virtue of the fact i thought that was one of the toughest speeches she's given this election cycle. she invoked white supremacy, bigotry, racism, paranoid fever dreams. look, charges of corruption and cronyism in the clinton foundation are tough but saying that donald trump is dangerously outside the mainstream of normalcy, set aside american politics, just the basic foundations of the democracy, those are very tough charges. in combination with an ad that features someone in klan garb, that's as tough as you're going to get in american politics. >> it is not something we have seen in our politics in our lifetimes, just like the trump campaign is not something we have seen in politics in our lifetime. the trump campaign is wrong.

i don't think this is the worst political week of clinton's campaign. they have gotten very good at flipping the bit, getting people to focus on trump because he gives them so much ammunition. she's done a few of these speeches in the past, foreign policy speech she gave in california where she went after his temperament. this speech, though, was off the charts in terms of its toughness. this is the key thing. all the trump people supporters, voters, people in the country are not racist, not part of the alt-right. but the alt-right is behind donald trump. there are plenty of supporters of donald trump who are. white nationalists, outright racists, xenophobes, there's a lot, they are out there. there's a lot of evidence to work with. what she is trying to do is trying to say as she said there to regular republicans, traditional republicans, you don't want to be in bed with these people. >> those are the people both campaigns are tying to speak to these week. normal republicans who feel like they don't have a place in the trump campaign. trump's minority outreach is in

large part directed at them. hillary clinton's speech today was directed to moderate republicans. >> this is the whole thing about this. this is again, we talked about it all week long. donald trump trying to talk to largely college educated white women with his speeches about, the ostensibly to african-americans and hispanics. this is getting a ton of coverage today and will get coverage tomorrow but the whole intended message is to say don't let you suburban white women in philadelphia, don't be fooled by what you're hearing from donald trump right now. remember, not just what donald trump has said but the people he's surrounded himself with. >> quoted maya angelou when people show you who they are, believe them. a new quinnipiac university poll came out today that shows hillary clinton leading donald trump by ten points, 51% to 41%. but it was another survey by the pugh research center that caught our eye. it suggests that aspects of donald trump's immigration plan are out of step with many of the nation's voters. 61%, for instance, said they

oppose building a wall on the u.s./mexico border which is maybe why trump seems to be about as confused as everyone else when it comes to his new posture on immigration. in a fox news town hall that aired last night, the republican nominee playfully asked the audience three times to vote on how to handle the estimated 11 million undocumented men and women living in the united states. in what "the washington post" aptly described as quote, game show style polls on the fate of human beings. so has trump changed his position? or as always, we turn to his spokeswoman katrina pearson to clear things up. >> he hasn't changed his position on immigration. he's changed the words that he is saying. >> in this case, she's kind of sort of right. at least about trump's word change. thanks to our friends at "morning joe" here's the evolution of trump's stance on the issue over the past few months. >> i have to go out and they will come back but they are going to have to go out. >> come on, folks.

we all know you can't pick them up and ship them back across the border. it's a silly argument. >> dwight eisenhower. they moved a million and a half people out. we have no choice. >> are you going to have a massive deportation force? >> we are going to have a deportation force and you are going to do it humanely. >> if you are president, what will you do for those members that are the fabric of our country that have been here for 25 years undocumented? >> they are going to go and we are going to create a path where we can get them into this country legally. otherwise we don't have a country. they are going to come back -- >> -- been in the country for 20 years, has done a great job, a job, everything else, okay. do we take him and the family, her or him or whatever, and send them out. they will pay back taxes, they have to pay taxes. but we work with them. >> this is not the only position trump took during the nomination contest that now seems to be

untenable. last night on rachel maddow's show, kellyanne conway struggled to rectify her boss' original muslim ban with his current proposal and could not specify exactly who trump was apologizing to when he expressed regret last week. trump and his campaign now seem to be facing two un-palatable choices. either they double down on unpopular policies or risk being labeled as flip-floppers. john, which one to choose? >> you can't -- a lot of politicians try to have it both ways. it's a time-honored tradition in presidential politics. these are egregious efforts to try to have it both ways, to say what kellyanne conway said last night which was well, his muslim ban, look at both of them, they are all part of a continuum, they kind of explain themselves. he expressed regret in general, so anybody who has been offended should take that as an apology. then this immigration thing which is the flip-flop to end all flip-flops. you look at that video, it

makes, before i was for the war, before i was against the war, it's horrible. i don't know which he really believes. i have no idea what trump actually believes about immigration. he may believe nothing about it. but i think that is such an egregious flip-flop that he is going to pay just a terrible, terrible price for it even with people on the far right and people in the middle of the country who will remember exactly what he said in the fall. >> keep in mind in that interview kellyanne conway bravely did, i thought, because it is almost an impossible position that she is in, with rachel maddow, at one point up on the screen pops on trump letterhead the calling for a complete and total ban on muslims entering the united states, written by donald trump, released to the national press and made a national news story by donald trump. and this is the price you pay. you cannot etch-a-sketch away something written on your own letterhead. you're welcome for that. >> throwback thursday. >> the idea, there is no nuance there. that is now the problem for the

campaign. >> i think there's a chance that, look, if you think about how toxic the positions that he took are, if the better thing it seems to me, if you are going to have to be labeled a flip-flopper is actually flip-flop and just declare it, say you know what, i was wrong before, i have learned more, i have talked to more people in the country, i have come to a different point of view. just admit it. you are going to take a big hit for that but at least are you not going to be painted as someone who is trying to do what seems like he's trying to do which is to pretend like all that stuff, on which his campaign was built, never happened. >> right. also, i think they must have some kind of internal numbers that suggest to them if they forsake these base voters who are very excited about the wall and the ban, then they plummet to a level that -- from which they are -- it is unrecoverable. >> yes. look, i think they are betting the people who love donald trump are not going to go anywhere. that those people will stay and put up with what seemed to be --

ann coulter said he can back away from anything, pivot away from anything, but he can't pivot away from immigration. i think they are betting ann coulter is an outlier and his people will still be with him. but boy, he's just put himself in a horrible, horrible place politically. when we come back, the clinton campaign's chief strategist will be right here in our studio on this set. my eyelove is girls' night out. my elove is the september issue. eyelove is all the things we love to do with our eyes. but it's also having a chat with your eye doctor about dry eyes at interrupt the things you love. because if you're using artificial tears often and still have symptoms, it could be chronic dry eye. go to myeyelove.com and feel the love.

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fresh off hillary clinton's scathing critique of donald trump and the alt-right, we are joined now by democratic pollster and senior strategist to clinton's campaign, the great joel benninson. thank you for your time. important man at an important time for hillary clinton. the donald trump campaign seems to be suggesting that the speech today was all about trying to pivot away from hillary clinton's worst week in politics. >> look, i think donald trump has been reeling. the wheels are coming off the

campaign. he's on his third campaign manager already. the guy who claims he hires the best people in the world. i think that we are in a phase now where the stakes in this election have to be put front and center before the american voters, before the american public. he's been trying to make some statements that, you know, whether he's been fed them by advisers or somebody is putting them in his teleprompter, who knows. but the reality is we will hold him to account for the positions he's taken that have been divisive, that have been dividing americans, that have been hateful, and we will hold him to account for those for the next 75 days of this campaign. >> is donald trump a racist? >> you know, i think when this first came up and hillary clinton said i don't know what's in his heart, i think that's an accurate statement. but what we do know is he's made racist comments. paul ryan said his comments about the judge were the definition of racism. of a racist statement. i think when you have been hauled into court by the justice department for engaging in housing discrimination and stamping the letter "c" on

people's applications because they are african-american or latino, i think those actions are racist. >> in a country where we don't practice schleyeleig slavery an you make racist statements over and over again, is that not the definition of being racist? >> i will let you judge that. i don't have to make that judgment. what i feel comfortable saying and doing and i think what our campaign feels comfortable saying and doing is holding up all the hateful statements that he has engaged in, that he has participated in, and the people that he's trafficking in. i think hillary clinton made a point today, tehe took a tweet from a known white supremacist, racist guy and takes a guy with a dozen followers and tweets it out to a million people. it's just behavior that flies in the face of our values as americans and as a country. >> i have one quick follow-up because it's on the same line. so donald trump's followers, his

voters, what's the -- is a substantial amount of his support from out front racists? is that your view? >> i think that, you know, there are a host of reasons why people are probably voting for donald trump. i am not going to try and quantify anything about his supporters. i think we know that first of all in a presidential election, there are a lot of people who say they don't agree with a lot of what donald trump says and they are voting for him. i think there are a lot of people who are appalled at many of the things he says and i think we will keep speaking to those voters. i think when you have kids at a basketball game playing and the other team's students at the high school are shouting build that wall and speak english, you are the leader of this country, you have to set a tone for everybody. donald trump has proven over and over again he's just completely and temperamentally unfit to be president of the united states. what we talked about today and what hillary clinton talked about today, this is part of that story. when you are dividing people, when you are using those kinds of comments, you are not fit to be president of the united states.

>> when you talk about the tone, was there any trepidation about using the image of a klan member in a campaign ad? >> it was a video that got released today. >> web video. >> web video. you know, i think the fact is that when you align with some of the people he's aligned with, steve bannon, breitbart, where they have created a home base for these people, they are recirculating their garbage, and then donald trump starts recirculating their garbage, i think the content of the video speaks for itself. you shouldn't be trafficking in that stuff. if you are a presidential candidate of the republican party, i think it's disgraceful. i think he's, again, it shows he's unfit to be president. i think it's fair game to say -- >> there was no trepidation about using a hooded klan member? >> i think you have considerations about everything but let's be clear. we are talking about a guy who looked into the camera when he was asked about david duke and

david duke supporting him and david duke stoking up people in his favor and he said i don't know anything about david duke. those are donald trump's words. do you really believe a 70-year-old man running for president of the united states doesn't know anything about david duke? from a man who said last week i will always tell you the truth. i guarantee you he knows everything he has to know about david duke and to traffic in this stuff is what makes it even worse. >> let me ask a political question. you guys -- >> i thought these were all political questions. >> actually, strategy questions. >> these are the softballs. >> you guys have run a lot of ads, millions of dollars worth of ads, priorities has run millions of dollars worth of ads. they have been pretty consistent. they haven't talked about this stuff. they talked about trump's temperament, his unfitness for office and lacks of qualifications. you haven't gone after him in the way you did in this web video. will we see the stuff we saw in this web video in paid advertising soon? >> i think there has been advertising about some of the odious comments. there have been ads from some folks. >> not featuring a klansman.

>> but there has been featuring of his hideous language towards women, calling hwomen pigs and disgusting, his mocking of a disabled reporter. >> i'm not saying the ads haven't been touched. i'm asking will we start seeing imagery like we saw today -- >> first of all, i'm not going to tell you what we will show in the future. what i will say is we will keep highlighting the more hateful his statements are, and they continue to be so, his speech last week to african-americans was a disgrace. he continues to denigrate and stereo type in the worst way a population that is still struggling, still striving for equality but also making gains, building communities, educating kids in their neighborhoods. we are going to highlight the hateful statements he makes, whoever they are about. >> we have so many more questions for you. we will come back right after this break and continue the conversation.

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we are back with the clinton campaign's chief strategist. thanks for stick around. i want to ask you, i don't want to spend a lot of time on foundation related stuff because you have been on tv and answered a lot of these questions. i want to ask a political question about it. a lot of democrats yell at us and say no one cares about these matters, no one cares, right? all the polling that i have seen including the bloomberg politics national poll we did which showed that more than half the

country is worried about, bothered a lot about the foreign donations to the clinton foundation, more than half the country is worried about the way she handled her e-mail. suggests to me at least that it's not true that no one cares about it. that in fact, a decent chunk of people. you are a numbers guy. is it really the case this is an issue that bothers no one, or that bothers no one of remaining available votes out there to be got? >> look, the last point you made is one that's true. i'm not going to judge what voters think or don't think about issues. what it does say is, you have looked at poll numbers as well, there are very few people left who haven't made up their mind. we are competing for those votes. we are competing very hard for those votes. at the same time, you have to keep your own votes. look, this is an issue we addressed in the last couple of days. hillary clinton addressed it again last night, said no excuses, reminded people a year ago she apologized, said it was not the right decision. i think what happens in the next weeks we have to go here, i think voters are going to listen to a debate about their lives, i

think they will focus on that more. i always say that they do. i think they are going to make a determination about these two people and which one of them can they count on to make a real difference in their lives going forward. >> you said you weren't going to tell me what voters think but this is your gig. that's what you have done your whole career, study what voters think about issues. do you have -- >> you are not one of them. >> do you have a sense that among available voters out there, available votes that are up for grabs, that this issue does not matter, or matters a little or matters a lot? >> i think people have factored it in. i think they digested the information, factored it into the totality of what they have heard from these two people and are making their judgments based upon it. don't forget, you had tens of millions of viewers tune in and watch conventions a few weeks ago where people had four days, both campaigns had four days to lay out their message, lay out their argument to the american people. they have heard everything. they factored these things in and are making the decision right now that the person they

can count on to make this country and take this country the way we want it to go and make their lives better is hillary clinton. >> let me ask the same question in a different way. is it your opinion that hillary clinton has reached the ceiling on her unfavorables? >> i think you just asked the same question in a different way. >> that's sort of the same question but sort of different question. >> if you look at the trend in polling what's been happening is actually that hillary clinton's numbers, her favorable and unfavorable are getting better. donald trump's favorable/unfavorables are getting worse. >> so maybe yes, she has reached the ceiling? >> i think if you communicate a positive, optimistic to voters about where you want to take this country, how you are going to do it, tell them how that impacts their lives, i think you will improve your favorables. i think that's what we're doing. i think donald trump, on the other hand, by the way, he came out of his convention, his numbers are getting worse. i think you have to think about that. he's as known to the american people right now as hillary clinton. they are seeing both these people every day. he's doing and saying some things that are making his numbers worse.

i can't explain that totally. i can explain it to some degree. i think it has to do with some of the hateful rhetoric we are talking about, the tone of his campaign, maybe some of the disarray. i can't tell you in what proportion. i think her numbers are improving because she is telling people what she's going to do for them, how she will get it done and how that will help their future. >> apparently i'm not a client of yours. that was one of the things i learned today. >> that was clear long ago, john. >> thank you for coming in. >> thank you for having me. >> we will check in on the trump campaign after this. azing is mo real is making new friends. amazing is getting this close. real is an animal rescue. amazing is over twenty-seven thousand of them. there's only one place where real and amazing live. book a seaworld vacation package and eat free.

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the letter of the day is j. because with us now is jennifer jacobs and jenna johnson who both cover donald trump's presidential campaigns and who both join us now from d.c. jenna, let me ask you first. hillary clinton gave a very tough speech today about donald trump and the alt-right. to what degree has the trump campaign known this was coming and to what degree are his

activities of today and tomorrow intended to mitigate some of the damage or fallout from that? >> yeah. i mean, they have been expecting an attack like this and in her speech, she laid out example after example of all of these things that could be in attack ads that his rivals during the primaries went after him on. she laid it all out. he gave a speech right before she did in new hampshire and tried to kind of beat her to some of these things. he walked through a lot of his controversial positions, you know, calling for restrictions on immigration from middle eastern countries or countries with terrorism, his call for a wall. some of his immigration positions. and basically, he said, you know, how dare she paint my supporters as being racist for backing these positions that he says keep people safe, keep

people alive and they might be controversial, they might not be politically correct but he says this is what he has to do to keep people safe. >> general fjennifer, the rally trump held this morning before or really kind of simultaneous with the web video the campaign put out was striking in the sense that unlike just saying kind of nihilistic things to african-americans, he actually talked about substance. talk about what the derivation of that is, financial discrimination against african-americans. >> right. i talked to conservative black leaders who were really appreciative he brought that up. it was a roundtable meeting with some minority activists. one of them asked him what he would do about discriminatory lending practices. he came back and affirmed he agrees that that's a big problem. he said that people with good jobs and good credit go in to get loans and can't get them. he said this is a real problem, he's been hearing this a lot.

he was saying i'm hearing this from real problem, i'm really going to take a look at it. i made a commitment to study it. so these black leaders are saying this was a divergence from all the name calling and pandering and just the beating each other up on race issues we saw today. this was a side example of trump saying i would like to do something about this, have my research people look into this and come up with some solutions to discriminatory lending problems so people have been appreciative of that. he did not mention that later in the day in his speech in new hampshire but i think people are going to hold him to that promithat he wants to look into this. >> in as much as donald trump has been meeting with hispanic and black conservatives in the last week, a lot of folks think that really this message is tailored to moderate republican women who may be scared off by donald trump's message. to what degree is the campaign sort of owning that or denying that? >> i did have a couple campaign aides say there is some legitimacy to the idea that they trying to reassure jumpy

establishment voters. interestingly, maybe hillary clinton is targeting that same audience. she was trying to snatch up the gop establishment and make them shy away from trump. trump is trying to justify his campaign and make those gop establishment voters less nervous about him by saying listen, just because you want a secure border doesn't mean you are a racist. just because you support police and law and order doesn't mean you are prejudiced. just because you want to do something about radical islamic terrorism doesn't mean you are an islamophobe. he's trying to reassure the same voters she's trying to peel away. they also do say this is a sincere effort to appeal to minority voters as well. they say take us at our word. we are really trying to reach out to blacks and hispanics and get that vote. >> let me ask, you wrote about donald trump's immigration speech last night, the stuff he talked about in the hannity event. we played this "morning joe" clip that laid out the evolution where trump started last year and where he is now from

deportation force and behind, supporting dwight eisenhower's operation wetback to now basically adopting jeb bush's position. where's the campaign on that? are they denying this has happened, he's changed his tune considerably, or are they owning that? >> you know, they are being very careful about this. they are saying that he hasn't changed his position but when you really push them on it, they say that you know, he might be willing to change his position. as far as where he stands, i don't exactly know. he's not put out any piece of paper with a statement saying this is what i believe about mass deportations. one thing i learned about donald trump is until you have that sort of pdf evidence, it's hard to really hold him to that being his stance. but he has said a lot of words that are buzzwords in this

debate. he talked about, you know, helping people out, having them pay taxes, you know, these buzzwords that appeared in jeb bush's positions, that we used to hear marco rubio saying on the campaign trail. so to a lot of people, his stance has changed. there's no going back. but at the end of the day i haven't seen a pdf saying that he's changed. >> you haven't seen the statement on trump letterhead which is proven to be problematic for him in the past. js of the day, thank you both. when we come back, we will talk with mitt romney's former senior strategist. this is my body of proof. proof of less joint pain. and clearer skin. this is my body of proof that i can fight psoriatic arthritis with humira. humira works by targeting and helping to block a specific

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works in just 3 minutes, killing 99.99% of odor causing bacteria. for a cleaner, fresher, brighter denture every day. with us now is stuart stevens, former senior strategist to mitt romney's 2012 campaign, joining us from annapolis, maryland. stuart, i will ask you a question. we always know you come on this show, you are a brilliant man and you are never trump. let's get that out of the way. now, if you weren't never trump, if you were in some way having to advise donald trump and you faced the challenge that he k t currently faces, really unpopular set of positions on things like immigration, say, and you wanted to make a change that would put him in a better place, how would you advise him to do that and given what your advice would be, how do you think they are doing at it right now?

>> listen, i think the senate candidates out there who are doing much better than donald trump are a good model of how to handle this. in all the battleground states the republican senate candidates are running considerably ahead of donald trump. as far as i can tell, most of them are talking about jobs and the economy, issues that more affect people's daily lives. this notion that the trump campaign or donald trump seems to have that crime is a critical issue at this moment or even that americans are walking around in constant fear of isis just doesn't -- it's just not true. i think that's part of the reason it's not resonating. >> on the flipside, if you were advising the clinton campaign, what should she be doing about the foundation and press conferences in general? >> it's a mess. i think she ought to have press conferences. i think the foundation is

something that they should just get out of. let other people run it. turn it over to other people. if it's doing good work, it can do good work under other stewardship. just break any connection to the foundation. >> looking at this day that's played out, with the clinton campaign going after donald trump for his association with the alt-right, putting up a pretty fiery web video tying him to the klan, do you think that as an analyst, are you looking at that saying they are really just trying to turn the page and win a news cycle, or do you think they are head into a new phase of the campaign where this will become a more central element of their strategy? >> look, there's a tremendous problem that donald trump has with white voters. these latest numbers, he's getting half -- has half the lead that mitt romney had in white voters. mitt romney won white voters 59%.

donald trump's doing much worse. particularly with white educated college and more voters, and particularly with women. i think it's a smart strategy on behalf of the clinton campaign to try to separate donald trump from other republicans. it would be a mistake for them to go out and say donald trump is like all republicans which would be one way to go. instead they're saying donald trump doesn't represent the best of the republican party. here are examples of those who rejected what this so-called alt-right, which i think is just rebranded racism, stands for. i think that's very smart. >> stuart, there are officially i think 74 days left until the election. as you look at the landscape, as a strategist, how much time truly is there left for each of these candidates to change pivot, et cetera? >> it gets harder.

i think you will have the debates as a big moment though historically, debates rarely alter the outcome of an election. they can alter dialogue in election, they can move numbers slightly. the big number i think in this race is donald trump's favorability. all these polls have him around 35%, some a little lower, some a little higher. as a candidate, you can overperform your favorables but there's a limit to it. just think about it. how many people will have an unfavorable view of a candidate and still vote for that person. donald trump is still running against donald trump. until they come to grips with that, they are just not open -- there's just a huge part of the country that's not open to anything that donald trump has to say. he needs to talk more about himself and about donald trump and what he would do. i think he needs to be more specific in his regret so that it has some actual meaning and

resonance with people. and then i think americans will always give someone a second chance but only if they ask and say they need it. >> you mentioned the debates and we are at a place where people are starting to talk about debate prep. you were very involved in mitt romney's debate prep. he did pretty well in his first debate against barack obama. what advice would you give hillary clinton as she starts thinking about how to prepare to take on donald trump in the first debate? >> well, debates are like most things in life. the best practice is to have done it. she's done a lot of these now. i think that's really going to help her. going into these debates. everybody has a different strategy. i have done this going back to then governor bush's and it was very interesting, when i did governor bush's debate prep and dick cheney's debate prep, they had very different approaches but both worked for them. vice president cheney loved to have run-throughs at the exact hour the debate would have. george bush hated it.

i think to take time is very important. understand this is a very important moment and dedicate the time and focus needed to really get ready for it. i'm sure they are going to do that in the clinton campaign. i doubt they are going to do that in the trump campaign. >> we will talk to you more about this topic in the future when we get closer to the debates. if you are looking for late summer reading, check out stuart's incredible political novel called "the innocent have nothing to fear." when we come back, a republican nominee revealed and no, we are not talking about the naked trump statues that popped up around the country. no tickets, no accidents... that is until one of you clips a food truck ruining your perfect record. yeah. now you would think your insurance company would cut you some slack, right? no, your insurance rates go through the roof. your perfect record doesn't get you anything. anything. perfect. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise your rates

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this week, "the washington post" unveiled a new biography about donald trump, a culmination of months of research and reporting on trump's past that they are calling "trump revealed." yesterday, we sat down with the book's authors and asked them

what their book exactly reveals about donald j. trump billionaire. >> if people think he's a menace to society, they have this view of him as not knowing very much, being sort of a boorish, coarse guy, if they think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread, a truth-teller, theu ultimate warrior against the politically correct, we managed to brush that aside, why he is the way he is. to do that you have to understand the full life of the man. we sent reporters to his ancestral homes in germany and scotland. we sent reporters to all around the world to his business projects, his hotels and so on, kazahkstan and panama and other places, and what we came up with is a full life, a guy who has an unusual parental background, unusual upbringing, a lot of

which goes a long way toward explaining why he is the way he is. >> i think if i were titling this book on the basis of that answer i would have called it "a trump in full." let me ask you this question. there's, mark just made a reference to people out there who think they have caricatured views of him. there are a fair amount of people in conservative circles who think he's an idiot and has no knowledge about the world. what do you say to that? smart, knowledgeable or no? >> well, he's very knowledgeable about the world that he lives in. he's very knowledgeable about the world of construction, about the business that he's built and one of the revealing things to me work og this book with a team of reporters at "the washington post" was the depths he reached in his business dealings. it's known that he had a roller coaster sort of existence. i think what's surprising is that the corporate bankruptcies, not personal bankruptcy as he talks about, but the corporate

bankruptcies, there were six of them, not four and three casinos, for example, went into corporate bankruptcy. we asked him about this. he said he considers the three bankruptcy one bankruptcy. they weren't. they were three separate court bankruptcy proceedings. so he looks at it and tries to prepackage it and tell the public here's exactly what i did. but there was a real roller coaster quality to his career and the depth that he plummeted to was often death-defying. it's amazing he did survive sometimes and he did so sometimes by running roughshod over creditors, bond holders or shareholders. we said mr. trump, how did this work out because you said you wanted what was best for atlantic city. he responded well, at the time i was making the best deal i could for donald trump. i had a saying, he said, and that was survive until 95 because he was afraid he couldn't last that long, that he would have to perhaps declare personal bankruptcy and it would all be over. he had to take a lot of maneuvers we detail in detail, excuse me, we go into detail in the book, that really bring that

to life, how he basically leveraged the difficult situation with the bankers and made a lot of deals that helped him survive. >> we know trump is notoriously pugnacious and litigious. he has been no fan of "the washington post" yet you had 20 reporters working on this with presumably his cooperation. can you tell us how that happened? >> yes. when we made the deal with scribner, the publisher, as a courtesy i called his press secretary a few days before the announcement of the book publicly and said we will be doing this project, we would love to sit down with mr. trump for a sooeries of interviews abt his life and get into all the different aspects of it. before i could really get the word out, hope said to me you are profiteering off mr. trump and we are not cooperating with this book at all. she was quite angry about it. well, two or three days later she called back and was all peaches and cream and said she had explained the project to donald trump and he was thrilled

about it. he wanted to cooperate and wanted us to come visit him in trump tower and spend time with him again and again. that is the essence of who donald trump is. he genuinely believes all publicity is good publicity. he genuinely believes he can manipulate reporters whichever way he wants to and yes, he was generous and gracious with his time, fully cooperative and yet a lot of the times it was hard to get a straight answer from him. there were certain people he wouldn't let us talk to. and he did regularly threaten us with lawsuits. we know that he sued the author of a previous book for $5 billion despite the fact he told us he never read the book. >> tell us a little more about his mastery of the new york press and the press writ large at least in the early stages of this campaign. >> from the very beginning of his career, he used the press to create this image of himself as a billionaire, as a rich guy, as a powerful developer who could bring political forces to bear and get projects completed that

no one else had been able to do. he picked this up in part from the legendary new york lawyer who was his mentor in any ways, and what the lawyer taught him was all publicity is good publicity, when you are attacked, counter-attack ten times as hard. trump really absorbed this. he had from his mother a sense of himself as a performer and from his father, a sense of himself as a power broker and someone who could force deals to be made. he put it all together with this idea that if he could get himself associated with the prettiest models, the biggest celebrities, studio 54, that whole scene, that would help create this image of him as someone people wanted to be like, this aspirational aspect to the trump brand. he's been building on that ever since, including in this campaign. >> i want to ask you about his brother freddy. the one who died, who was alcoholic, died very young. what kind of impact did that have, if any, lasting impact, on donald trump?

>> yes. well, he talks about, donald trump talks about several key events in his life that were among the most tragic. certainly the deaths of his parents, his mother and father, and fred, another incident where three executives died in a helicopter crash. the death of fred was extraordinarily impactful on donald trump. donald trump looked up to his brother, admired him, says he was a dashing, better-looking man than donald trump himself, and yet donald trump followed his father's pass as a builder. for whatever reason, fred trump did not want to do that. fred trump jr. decided he wanted to be a pilot. donald trump looked at that profession and said how is that different from being a bus driver. he just didn't see the quality and wondered why his brother was not going in the family business. but fred trump jr. was very happy doing that. but he also had a lot of difficulties. according to donald trump, he drank, smoked, had all sorts of problems, and died at an early age. so donald trump looks at that and says i learned from that, that i never want to take alcohol and he says he's never

had a single drop of alcohol and has never smoked. he's tried to learn the lessons of his brother and looked up to him and feels sad about that, but donald trump's way is to sort of look at a problem or crisis and figure out where do we go from here. we saw that again and again. some people watch donald trump very close to him who talked to us and said he would get emotional but then would just move on. they found that astonishing but said that was a consistent characteristic for donald trump. >> our thanks to them. "trump revealed" is out now. i love that my shop is part of the morning ritual around here. people rely on that first cup and i wouldn't want to mess with that. but when (my) back pain got bad, i couldn't sleep. i had trouble getting there on time. then i found aleve pm. alevpm is the only one to combine a sleep aid plus the 12 hour strength of aleve. for pain relief that can last into the morning. ♪ look up at a new day... hey guys! now i'm back. aleve pm for a better am.

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hillary clinton: i'm hillary clinton and i approve this message. vo: in times of crisis america depends on steady leadership. donald trump: "knock the crap out of them, would you? seriously..."vo: clear thinking... donald trump: "i know more about isis than the generals do, believe me." vo: and calm judgment. donald trump: "and you can tell them to go fu_k themselves." vo: because all it takes is one wrong move. donald trump audio only: "i would bomb the sh_t out of them." vo: just one.

you got to head to bloombergpolitics dom .com to sw campaigns are using snapchat to sway voters. thanks to alex wagner for filling in for mark halperin this week. it's been nice.

>> tip your servers. it's been my pleasure. this television experiment is the best thing that's happened to me this week. >> sayonara. >> namaste. >> "hardball with chris matthews" is next. letting it rip. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in boston. hillary clinton and donald trump escalated their attacks. the weapon of choice, race. hours ago, hillary clinton accused trump of embracing racists and white nationalists. >> he promoted the racist lie that president obama is not really an american citizen, part of a sustained effort to delegitimize america's first