active protest than the substance. that's all we have tonight. back tomorrow with more. don't miss the premiere of the 11th hour with brian williams tonight at guess when? 11:00 p.m. eastern. "with all due respect" starts on time. i'm mark halperin. >> i'm john heilemann. "with all due respect" to those suggesting hillary clinton's coughing fits are reason for deep concerns about her health -- the seventh inning stretch is over, sports fans. today marks the first day of the final innings of the presidential race. the concession stands are closing and in exactly nine weeks we will have a winner and a different kind of concession speech. grab a beer and pray this thing doesn't go into extras because there are some big news-making polls out that appear to show the contest has tightened.

but before we get to that, hillary clinton and donald trump are once again both on the campaign trail, a day after their various operations, respective operations, nearly collided in ohio for competing labor day events. today, the candidates and their running mates are fanned out. they held events in north carolina, virginia, florida and missouri this afternoon, starting a sprint to november that sounded a bit like this. >> so we have 62 days. 62 days to make the case and i can't do it without you. >> we came out with a plan, a ten-point plan and it's on the website. you will see it if you want -- i'm sure most of you have already seen it but it's been really praised by the veterans and veterans groups. >> his whole campaign has been one long insult to all those who have worn the uniform to protect our most cherished american values. >> you have illegal immigrants that she wants and he wants treated better than veterans.

>> donald trump trash talks our own military and those who sacrifice for it including john mccain, an american hero and p. p. p.o. w. >> donald trump and i believe this election comes down to a few basic things. it comes down to security and prosperity, the supreme court of the united states and it comes down to making sure that we maintain the highest standards of integrity in the highest office in the land. >> mark, i was away. you were away. it's been awhile since we both sat opposite each other. welcome back. good to see you. >> happy to be back. tanned rested and ready. >> two of those three. i will leave you to figure out which. the question i have as we start today, big picture overall, where stands this presidential race? >> pretty much where i thought the race would be when it became clear these were going to be the nominees. hillary clinton has huge advantages structurally in the electoral college, in demographics, big head start on fund-raising, big head start on organizing. trump has been an uneven candidate at best but he had a horrible august except he closed

strong and he is now within striking distance with some luck, with a strong debate, and with a more consistent performance focused on change and jobs, all of which are possible. >> well, if you think about it, it's not that trump is an inconsistent candidate. you could argue his worst stretch starting with attacking the khans immediately after the democratic convention, for that month he had a horrible month and to be anywhere in hailing distance of her is to many people inconceivable, kind of boggles the mind, and also it puts him as you say, if i were him i would feel pretty happy with the fact i'm not totally out of this race on this day. >> voters are starting to pay more attention. it is the biggest cliche in political journalism but it's true. he has now an opportunity not to erase the past, because the clinton campaign will not let him do that. but he has an opportunity to start acting the way he acted in mexico, the way he acted in a town hall with his family on cnn with anderson cooper. the way he's acting on occasion

giving set piece speeches as someone who is qualified and ready. again, the clinton people will not let people, voters, forget all the other things he did. but if his demeanor can be strong the next two months, he can keep this a very close race. >> but the reality is, i just said trump should be happy with where he is given his performance in the last month, it's still the case that the nbc news battleground map has clinton either safe or leading in 272 electoral votes, more than you need to be president. trump at 174, toss-up 92. they say over and over that she has a lot of paths to get to 270. she does. he doesn't have very many. >> those things you pointed to are still the overwhelming fact of the race. she will be the favorite until the end, if he wins. she's ahead but looking over her shoulder at a guy who has narrowed the gap, even her own campaign would acknowledge. let's talk about the new polls that have framed the coverage today. first full day back here.

nbc news and survey monkey have a new national poll out that suggests hillary clinton is leading donald trump among registered voters, 41% to 37%. gary johnson, former new mexico governor, is at 12%. another national poll by cnn and orc has created a lot of waves today because it shows trump and clinton essentially tied amongst likely voters though trump is statistically up two points, 45% to 43%. clinton is ahead by three if you look at the universe of registered voters. both polls show the candidates within the margin of error. that cnn poll also has hillary clinton's unfavorability rating rising higher than trump's, 56% of voters view her unfavorably compared to 54% of the republican nominee, an eight point swing since the same poll asked the question in early august. all day the clinton campaign has pushed back on this cnn poll, dismissing it as an outlier.

they are right. it doesn't track with the rest of the polls that have been out of late. it was taken over a holiday weekend. they do admit, though, in the clinton campaign, this race has gotten tighter. there's also a new 50-state online poll done by "the washington post" with again, survey monkey. that highlights the fact as john mentioned that hillary clinton has a big electoral college advantage. there are a surprising number of states in this survey of 50 states that show him in the toss-up category. some you would expect like ohio and florida, but this poll also says that states like texas and mississippi which are about as red as tomato soup from campbell's, are now in play. john, are these three polls outliers or are they indicators of where the race is? >> if the things you take away from these polls as snapshots of the world right now, i think that's how we should treat all these polls, is that the race is

relatively tight, that clinton has a big advantage in terms of the electoral college, and that trump is playing defense in more genuinely red states than clinton is playing defense in genuinely blue states, not talking about battleground or purple states, i think that's all an indication of where the race actually stands today. >> trump will have to assume if he's going to have any chance of winning, there's going to be a national surge or surge let that will allow him to win states like texas and georgia even if they are close now. the democrats say the cnn poll is out of kilter and it is. but it might be an indicator the race has tightened by their own admission. if you look at the margin of error, it could have clinton up five which is where the democrats think the race is. >> yes. >> i think people are obviously going to overreact to the notion of trump being ahead statistically. he's not. he's behind. but the cnn poll suggests the reality which is in the last couple weeks, the race has gotten tighter. >> the trend line is towards tightening. but again, i'm going to go crazy throughout this cycle if we

don't keep telling people that two-point leads are not leads. that's a tied race. you are behind by two, up by two, in any margin of error basically that's a tie race, even broader some of these polls with broader margins of error. this is i think on a national level as i said basically a tied race but boy, that electoral map, if you are donald trump and you have some of the deficits that both sides admit that he has, in terms of organization, in terms of having a real operation, you look at texas, you look at arizona, you look at georgia, you look at, i mean, those are states that are boy -- >> trump, though, has always been a different kind of candidate with a different kind of coalition. if a winning coalition for trump and if we don't think that, we can shut down, if there's a winning coalition it's different than we are used to. >> apparently our bell is out of commission. i would have rung it earlier. questions have resurfaced about a 2013 donation donald trump's foundation gave to florida attorney general pam bondi around the same time bondi's office was deliberating over

whether to investigate fraud allegations against trump university. trump and his campaign deny any shady business but this is just one of a litany of controversies and accusations that have been dogging the republican nominee of late. what else might be on that list, you ask? today hillary clinton walked to the back of her shiny new campaign plane and rattled off a few of them. >> the "new york times" discovered about $650 million owed to foreign banks and foreign entities. we know about his relationships with the kremlin, his own and those of people with whom he has worked and truly, the list goes on and on. the scams, the frauds, the questionable relationships, the business activities. clearly his tax returns tell a story that the american people deserve and need to know. and his continuing claim that he can't release his tax returns

because he's under audit has been disproved repeatedly. >> trump is still trying to clear up his stance on mass deportations for undocumented immigrants as well as some of those other matters. yesterday, he tried to put any questions about his health to rest, telling abc's david muir he plans to release his full medical records. so thinking about the whole spectrum there of what we will call flaps, controversies, imbroglios, which of those matters is likely to stick? >> let me stipulate the clinton campaign is right. trump is being held to a less high standard than clinton right now. there are so many controversies involving trump, partly it's the fault of the clinton campaign for not being able to choose but partly it's because the press is not treating them equally. trump is doing things that if clinton did, she would be hit a lot harder. we shouldn't do that. everyone should work on fixing that. i think the immigration thing is the one that's most likely to stick, because most of these things involving his personal finances and flip-flops and inconsistencies, the press is just not holding him accountable and i don't think will, although

we should. the thing about immigration is trump basically i think has tried to land where a lot of republicans are which is i'm not going to talk about the 12 million. border security first. we have had countless republicans on this show who have taken the position. >> can't answer the question. >> that's where he's trying to be but he's being held to in this case a tougher standard, most reporters let republicans get away with saying that. trump isn't being allowed to get away with it. >> this pam bondi thing is a classic example of what you just cited. this is an actual thing that on the face of it looks like pay for play. it is outrageous. >> remember what trump used to say. i know all about pay for play. that's what i used to do. >> you think about it, there's nothing close to that on the surface on the face of it that looks as much like pay for play in the clinton foundation whole thing, we will talk about that in a second, nothing close to this. this is bad. i think potentially the group of issues that surround trump and corruption and potentially russia are things that could stick to him, especially if putin and more hacking stuff comes up later in the campaign.

>> we will talk more about that later. for now let's talk about hillary clinton. she's facing her fair share of bad story lines as well. today, the republican congressman from utah, jason chaffetz, head of the house oversight committee, sent a letter to the u.s. attorney of the district of columbia asking him to investigate whether clinton and her aides obstructed justice by deleting e-mails from her now very very famous server. in addition to the questions still swirling about the fbi's now closed investigation into clinton's e-mail practices, concerns remain and are being reported on about her family foundation, and allegations that donors got access and maybe special treatment at the state department. there's also of course those drudge-driven rumors about clinton's health. same question we asked about trump. which of these is most likely to endure as a problem for clinton? >> i think there seems to be no doubt the foundation is the one that will be a problem for her going forward. there's a new story just now out from scripps that suggest the

foundation hasn't complied with disclosure laws. there -- reporters are all over this story. nothing has been established that rises to the level of bondi level pay for play but there's a lot of gray area, a lot of murk and there will be a ton of reporting on this that goes forward. that's why it's going to stick to her at least in terms of having to answer questions. >> because e-mails were destroyed and can't be found, there will be the suspicion in the media's mind, there's great frustration, they say there's no quid pro quo and the press says we can't find the quid pro quo because you destroyed the evidence. for some reason the fbi didn't care. i think the nexus between e-mails and the foundation will haunt her and there are more releases coming. every time they come now, unlike new disclosures about trump, i'm not defending this, i'm just saying i know it to be true because i'm a keen observer of our practice in the media, every time a new batch comes out it will get attention. every time a new thing about trump comes out, for some

reason, the press' attitude is old story. >> the press should be tougher on donald trump but should not stop being tough on hillary clinton on these questions. they're legitimate. up next, great game of debate expectations and congress on its way back to work. where we explore. protecting biodiversity. everywhere we work. defeating malaria. improving energy efficiency. developing more clean burning natural gas. my job? my job at exxonmobil? turning algae into biofuels. reducing energy poverty in the developing world. making cars go further with less. fueling the global economy. and you thought we just made the gas. ♪ energy lives here. ♪ ♪

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when it comes to presidential debates, history suggests that winning has less to do with pure performance. it's almost all about beating expectations. on this front, hillary clinton's got a problem. the first debate is not until the end of this month but already the clinton campaign is reaching out to spin reporters ferociously about how great a debater donald trump is. today on her press plane, the candidate did brian fallon's job, going so far as to suggest that donald trump is in fact the greatest debater since socrates. >> i am preparing for the debates. i'm doing my homework. donald trump is a self-proclaimed great debater

who won every one of the republican debates so i take nothing for granted. i think this will be a difficult challenging debate which is why i'm going to be thinking hard about what i need to present to the american people. >> clinton team is clearly struggling in their effort to set debate expectations. in the next three weeks, can her campaign level the playing field or is she going to go in this with the disadvantage in the expectations game? >> there is so little she can do about this because reality is that she's a very very good debater and has got a lot of history and a lot of experience. she will have higher expectations and she should just embrace them and say you know what, i'm going to go in and kick donald trump's butt. that's the end of the story. >> and that he's a clown and doesn't know anything. >> just go for it. >> i feel their pain. i get why they're trying to spin this but i agree. it's going to be hard to change it. i think your way's a good idea. but i think they can't make it

equal but i think they can basically say to the press, as they have said to me, they said to me don't grade on expectatio expectations. it's not fair. >> that's the honest way to do it. to argue that there shouldn't be grading on the curve. >> they should say this is not fun and games. this is the presidency of the united states. who can go out there and show they're ready. >> i just find it totally, there's spin that works better and spin that works worse. but the spin when it flies in the face of what every reporter believes and what -- >> i will do the best i can but donald trump, he talks for a living. >> and ait's at odds with what they say about him in every other area of the campaign. it makes no sense. say the guy's a clown, we will show he's a clown. nch >> i have seen presidential campaigns spin expectations. they say things that are that ridiculous. in this case, this goes back, hillary clinton is not treated fairly by the media. people are just not going to see

her and her team as credible in talking to donald trump. it will be seen as what it is. which is naked spin. >> which is why it makes more sense to say you guys, the bar should be really high. we are going to meet that bar and he's not, then go do it. >> up next, the soothsayers break down the latest polls. [ crowd noise ] whoa. [ gears stopping ] when your pain reliever stops working, your whole day stops. try this. but just one aleve has the strength to stop pain for 12 hours. tylenol and advil can quit after 6. so live your whole day, not part... with 12 hour aleve. soon, she'll be binge-studying.. get back to great. this week 50% off all backpacks.

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the tale of two polls. on one page, a new nbc news survey monkey poll shows hillary clinton leading donald trump by four points among registered voters but a cnn/orc poll has trump leading two points among likely voters. which of the two is right? we have called in our pollster in chief, soothsayer ann seltzer from des moines to make sense of it all. thank you for coming on the show. let's start with the cnn/orc poll and trump up 45% to 43%. from 30,000 feet, good poll or is there reasons to be dubious? >> you know, there are about a dozen polls pollsters take a look at in our community and say this is one of the ones i pay attention to. the cnn/orc poll is definitely one of them. you have to sort of take a look and say what has changed so dramatically since their last poll and are there things that sort of are questionable about this one. >> and we have talked about this before, but always good, particularly during this

transition period, talking about likely versus registered. trump has consistently done better in surveys of likely voters rather than registered voters. not surprising that one where he's ahead is likely. why, to repeat, why does trump do better with likely voters? >> well, this is the thing that is so important and this poll shows this both ways, that clinton does better with registered and trump does better with likely voters. there's about a ten-point gap in the population, that is about 10% of the population are registered to vote but do not vote. demographically, that group tends to be younger, that group tends to be urban, that group tends to be lower income. that group, all of those things tilt democratic. so if you are suddenly extracting those unlikely voters out of your universe, things are going to tilt more republican. we see that exactly playing out in this poll. >> so the clinton campaign says

republicans are overrepresented in this poll sample. is the case that in this poll sample, it projects the electorate at 32% republican, 28% democrat. that's pretty far out of line with the actual results in 2008 and 2012. how does that happen, why does that happen, and is that -- does that give creedance to the claim the clinton campaign is making about not paying attention to this poll? >> one, the political party idea, someone asks me what party i am today, that's a floating variable. there's a lot more that happens on the day-to-day basis than political scientists would like to think. they like to think it's fixed. that said, these numbers are different in that there are about eight percentage points higher on republican than this very same poll had a month ago. what's striking is that they have the identical percentage of democrats this month as they had last month. so where the republican

advantage has grown is out of independents who are now lower in this poll, they were higher before. now, trump has a 20-point lead among independents so you have to wonder if you actually did mess around with party i.d. how much effect that would end up having on the bottom line. >> where has trump gained besides the fact that independents make up a larger part of the poll? where has trump gained, which groups cause him in this poll to be better off? >> the most important group with which he's gained, again, this is one more reason to give it some credence. i'm pretty tolerant of polls that look a little different. is that he's gained ground with self-identified republicans. again, i like to look at the same poll month to month. a month ago, it was in the 80% of republicans who said they were supporting donald trump. he is now almost even with hillary clinton with about 94% of republicans saying they

support him. that's what she gets with democrats. so he's brought some republicans home. another reason for his boost. >> there's tons of reasons to think that could be realistic, maybe not the same numbers, as this poll shows, but the trump campaign has put a real emphasis on the last several weeks in trying to bring republicans home. >> that's right. that's exactly right. it would be too easy to toss this one out. >> let's quickly think about "the washington post" survey monkey poll. 50 states online poll, really really large sample size. talk about the methodology of that poll and what you think of it. >> well, survey monkey has broken new ground in what it is they're doing. they admit this is an experiment. they have a platform, that is, customers who use their software in order to conduct surveys of their customers, of their association members, of whatever it might be, and on any given day, there are two million people in the united states who are taking a survey monkey

survey. they take a sample of those and offer them the opportunity to participate in a short political current events questionnaire. that's where they get this huge number. as you can imagine, on a national basis, it's easier to balance things out in terms of the way things are going to look compared to what we know registered voters to look like, for example. harder on a state by state basis. >> i look forward to a future where all of us spend most of our day filling out survey monkey surveys online. thank you very much. up next, bloomberg's editor in chief joins us to talk about his interview with president of russia after this. hi, i'm dominique wilkins.

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we did talk about cybersecurity generally. i'm not going to comment on specific investigations that are still alive and active. but i will tell you that we have had problems with

cyberintrusions from russia in the past. look, we're moving into a new era here where a number of countries have significant capacities and frankly, we got more capacity than anybody both offensively and defensively but our goal is not to suddenly in the cyber arena duplicate a cycle of escalation that we saw when it comes to other arms races in the past. >> president obama speaking yesterday describing his talk with russian president putin on the site of the g-20 summit in china. our next guest just got back from russia where he interviewed the country's strong man president. with us, editor in chief of bloomberg, john mickelthwaite. i want to ask you overview since not everyone watching the show will have time with vladimir putin. is he like a normal person or is

there something different about him? >> i met him a couple times before off the record things. strangely, he's more kind of macho in private things than he was there. he was very courteous. it's more the impact he has on people around him. people scurry around, retinues, buildings are cleared. it's more the implicit power. almost medieval in that way. >> let's look at when you asked president putin if he would be happy to see donald trump elected as the next president of the united states. >> translator: you know, we can't answer for the american people. after all, with all the sharp tactics of not only one but the other candidate, they are both using sharp tactics in their own way. they are smart, very smart people. they understand [ inaudible ] if you listen to them.

>> so it seemed to a lot of people in the united states that putin clearly prefers trump to clinton. did that come through in this interview? >> that was my point. putin was saying look, i don't care, it's for the american people to choose but you look at the record, clinton, putin has said he thinks clinton was trying to get rid of him in 2011, organizing protests against him. in contrast, donald trump has pretty much as i put it had a more or less almost homoerotic descriptions of putin. he's a fantastic man, he can do business. recently he's got a bit tougher. the idea putin would sit there and say i really don't care about this woman who wants to overthrow me and this man who seems at various times to be a tiny bit in love with parts of me, that's incredible but putin, for all the bluster, loves stirring things up. the advantage of hillary, i

think he knows roughly how to deal with her. from his point of view, maybe having a hillary who he sullied a bit is quite a good way to go ahead. >> obviously the place where this comes to bear is on the question of the leaks. you asked him about the allegations that russia was involved in hacking the democratic party's e-mails. here's what he had to say about that. >> translator: is that really important? doesn't matter who hacked the information from the campaign hau ha headquarters of mrs. clinton. there should be discussion about this and there's no need to distract the public's attention by some search of who did it. but i want to tell you again, i don't know anything about it. on the state level, russia has never done this.

>> so hillary clinton clearly paying attention to your interview because she yesterday responded to what putin said. >> when putin was asked about it, he could barely muster the energy to deny it. many of you saw that. in fact, he went on to say it was a good thing that the dnc had been hacked and of course, the intelligence consensus is it was hacked by russian intelligence. so we are facing a very serious concern. we have never had a foreign adversarial power be already involved in our electoral process with the dnc hacks. >> so i thought it was extraordinary how putin responded to your question. very cavalier and kind of basically having said to you i don't really care who wins, basically then went on to say but the fact that the democratic party's e-mail got hacked was a great thing, obviously that's damaging to her.

>> i think there's an element of look, no hands. it's almost he's playing with it. it works very well. it adds to his reputation as being someone who can do these sort of things. on the other hand, he has got a point. hillary is managing or trying very hard to turn the conversation from what is in these e-mails and what they say about her personality to the question of who actually hacked them. there's an element, like many things putin says, there's a kernel of truth. the thing about putin, he's a very, very good analyzer of the strengths and weaknesses of people. that's why he really stands out. i think he thinks, he senses this is a weakness for hillary so he's just pushing in the way that he does very opportunistically. >> it's hard to say through the translation but does he seem to have a complete handle on what's going on with the american election? >> i think he follows it. i think it's a very strange relationship. you imagine his version of russia is a russia that is equal

to america. he grew up, the russia he still has a very obvious harkining back to is one where the biggest meeting every year was russia meets america to discuss missiles or whatever. that's the world he wants to be seen as. so when he looks at america it's with a mixture, some element of jilted spouse in it. he's angry about various things america has done and he goes on about the sharp tactics and all these things he would merrily use himself but at the same time, there's an element that he wants to be a player. >> you think he would welcome questions about the american election or be annoyed? >> i think he expected them. the only condition was we had to ask him in the beginning about the g-20. he said after that you could ask anything. he's got more confident that way. j >> there's a good reason why heads of state stay out of other countries' politics because if they lean one direction and the other person wins, they have problems down the line. is he not at all concerned about

the likelihood hillary will be president and he will have been seen as being on trump's side? >> to some extent i think he's already factored that in. i think he more wants to be seen as someone who can cause problems. you look at the way he's handled obama. there are lots of things he's done which i bitterly disapprove of but in terms of the way he's done it, he's been opportunistic. whenever he thinks obama left a vacuum, he's jumped in. i think he thinks that's the same way he can deal with hillary. you might remember also he brings up the same thing people on trump's side are trying to say that he gave money to the foundation so everyone's -- which is a clever way of reminding viewers hillary has one or two problems in that area, too. >> i know it's hard for the translation and we all see kind of the coldness and some negative traits through those clips. did he exhibit any traits in the room that were positive human traits? was he funny, charming? >> he can be -- when you score a blow at him, he smiles with some degree of i'll get you later.

we asked him, for instance, i talked about the dynasties in america, bushes, clintons, whether his daughters which were a subject you weren't allowed to talk about in russia, whether that was something we like to follow. he talks rather like a father would about the fact he doesn't particularly want his daughters to follow the same life as he did. that again has some degree of shakespearean element about it. >> interesting thing about him, he's sat there, he's run one of the most difficult countries in the world for 16 years. there's very few people who managed to do that, especially in a place where if you lose power, it's more brutal. >> great interview. thank you. you can see john's full interview with vladimir putin online right now at our website. coming up, we check in on the trump campaign. ♪"all you need is love" plays my eyelove is finding a different angle. my eyelove is season 1, episode 1.

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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. w...i was always searching for ways to manage my symptoms. i thought i had it covered. then i realized managing was all i was doing. when i finally told my doctor, he said humira was for people like me who have tried other medications,... but still experience the symptoms of moderatto severe crohn's disease. in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief... ...and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fit infections... ...including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers,... including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions,...

...and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tellour doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, anif you've had tb,... ...hepatitis b, are prone to inctions, ...or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. if you're ill just managing your symptoms, ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira,emission is possible. people like to say that labor day is the turning point for the general election. so we called in nbc news correspondent katy tur to talk us through how donald trump is viewing this final sprint. she joins us from greenville, north carolina, where the donald will hold a rally later on tonight. it's been a big national security day. it's going to be a big national security day tomorrow as well. this is a place where the clinton campaign thinks they have a really huge advantage over trump. how does the trump campaign feel

about that? are they playing defense or do they think there's some chance they could make this into a winning issue for them? >> reporter: they don't think she does have an advantage on national security and there is some polling out there that agrees with donald trump. military families liking donald trump better than hillary clinton, also a lot of folks out there who are afraid of terror making that their number one concern, say they believe donald trump will be stronger against terror than hillary clinton. they don't necessarily believe that clinton has the advantage over them, especially with donald trump coming out and being so hard line when it comes to fighting isis, saying he's going to bomb the hell out of them, et cetera. they believe they are appealing to a certain section of the electorate that doesn't find hillary clinton to be a strong leader. people don't necessarily trust clinton, they don't necessarily agree with the state of affairs between america and the middle east right now. you can remember also that donald trump has been talking very strongly when it comes to

national security in general. since day one. so this is not necessarily something that they believe that hillary clinton can defeat them on alone. >> let's talk about the transparency wars. the trump campaign on a daily basis talks about hillary clinton being secretive in a variety of ways, not available to the press. yesterday he brought reporters on his plane, matching what she was doing. and trump yesterday said he would release his medical records. is this something they are trying to play offense on or defense on, do you think? >> reporter: i think they're trying to play defense on this. they got a new jet on the clinton campaign, she travels with the press. they have tried to paint her as inaccessible, saying this is a running countdown clock that says hillary clinton does not speak to the press, she's hiding from them, refusing to hold a press conference. yesterday she held a 25-minute gaggle with her press corps on a plane she rides with them on. donald trump does not have that. so instead at the last minute they alerted the pool, one or two reporters and a camera that have been charged with following

the trump campaign for that day, so they could fly with them on donald trump's jet. that's unpress didn't prespreu. they never did that before and it seemed to be in response to hillary clinton. donald trump was asked if he was going to continue to do that, make it a regular thing, and he said in the same sentence yeah, maybe, maybe not. i don't know. basically something like that. i think they are trying to match hillary clinton in terms of accessibility at least by appearance of doing so, by having the press on his plane yesterday. in terms of medical records, that certainly is a new one. we will see if it actually happens, if he does release anything more. but as of now, it does seem to be a whole lot of talk. >> katy tur, thanks for coming on the show. coming up, for the second day in a row, hillary clinton has taken questions from the press. we talk about that and more after this. real is making new friends. amazing is getting this close.

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welcome back, loyal viewers. with us now, washington editor of national review and "the washington post" political

reporter. both ladies are in washington. thank you for joining us. happy fall-ish to both of you. i will ask about the accessibility wars. what do you think's going on with both campaigns as they in some ways are more open and accuse the other of not being open? >> well, i think clearly, this drumbeat of stories and e-mails being released about the state department and connecting the clinton foundation are taking their toll, and clinton advisers i think are aware of this. one thing they wanted to take off the table was this attack he had against her that she was quote unquote, hiding from the press. that's something they have tried to do very definitively today with several opportunities for the press to chat with her. i think we will clearly see them continue that line and she's trying to flip this transparency argument back on to trump by emphasizing his refusal to release his tax returns, something she said today she's

going to continue to hammer him on. so i think as much as possible, obviously the clinton folks want to get the spotlight off questions about her transparency and accusations of secrecy and back on to his finances. >> do you think, you think about the things hillary clinton is attack donald trump over, the two things we were just talking about there, one of them is obviously the accessibility issues, another is obviously his connection to russia, something we talked about earlier, which of those do you think the trump campaign feels more vulnerable over? >> really, they should feel incredibly vulnerable to both of them but i think they currently feel more vulnerable to the russia issue. it obviously played a role into trump nudging out paul manafort and the drumbeat of that i think makes republicans very nervous and it eats into whatever advantage trump has on national security.

the idea that he's cozy with dictators and in fact, would not be a strong presence on the world stage really eats into an existing advantage that he has. the truth is both candidates are incredibly hostile to the press in different ways. so i think that right now it is an equalizer between the two of them. >> let me ask you both, matea first, at least four areas where the republicans were behind a couple months ago, there was some panic or something close to it, campaign fund-raising, super pac fund-raising, on the ground organizing and tv advertising. where do the republicans stand today on those four measures and are they likely to be close enough by election day to say those four things didn't cost them the election? >> i think if you had told someone when this cycle began that the democratic nominee and democratic party would be ahead of the republican counterparts financially on the ground and on the air, no one would have believed you but that is the situation we're in today for

various reasons. the primary one being the fact that trump really did not have a fund-raising operation in place when he became the nominee. it took awhile to get that going. they finally are raising money in conjunction with rnc and i think frankly, seeing a lot of success online. but getting so much money late in the game is not as effective as raising money throughout the process as we have seen with clinton. she has a huge advantage on the air waves and on the ground, and that is something that i think has republicans incredibly worried. one thing that hasn't helped is the fact that trump himself has sort of poo-poohed the need for some of the traditional campaign tactics like television ads. that's made it actually very difficult for some of the super pacs raising money to support him to get -- collect those big checks to put on some of the glossy tv ads many allies feel he needs. >> he track the ground game closely between the republican national committee state parties and the trump campaign.

will they be close enough to parity by election day that it doesn't cost them the race? >> you know, to refer to the trump operation as a campaign i think is generous right now. by every metric they're just getting slaughtered on the ground, in data operations. clinton has a modern campaign. people like to say campaigns are startup organizations. clinton really has that. trump doesn't. he is one man giving rallies in one state or another day to day and i think if republicans lose in november, one of the questions is going to be did republicans lose because people didn't give money and therefore, they didn't build out a ground game or did people not give money because they thought trump was a losing candidate. >> just staying with you on this, given what you just said about the trump campaign, it's obviously really important the rnc is taking on a lot of the functions the trump campaign would normally do on its own, what's the state of the relationship right now between trump tower and the republican national committee? >> the relationship is and

always has been incredibly strained. trump poo-poohed doing a lot of the things a candidate does. there are certain things, particularly fund-raising, that candidates have traditionally taken the lead of. mitt romney was an unbelievable fund-raiser and he went out, asked people for money. trump hasn't done that and relegated that task to the rnc. we have evidence of how well this is working. the rnc, look at the july numbers, raised between half and a third of what it raised in july 2012, july 2008. this is working abysmally. you can see the effect on the party committees, the nrsc, nrcc, raising republican congressional races. this is hurting republicans all across the board down ballot. as a result the relationship between the trump campaign and the republican national committee is incredibly strained. contrary to the reports that have been out there, i think that reince priebus is going to be in a very vulnerable position if trump loses in november.

>> is it possible still that some mega-wealthy conservatives will start writing big checks to the trump super pacs? >> sure. we often see in the final heated six weeks of the campaign a lot of big money comes in. but as you both well know, this money is much less valuable than the early money. first of all, the advertising rates go through the roof so already super pacs are at a disadvantage, have to pay more than a campaign. they will pay even a greater premium later in the race. people's views about these candidates have solidified even though we see a lot of voters are undecided about who to support, it's not because they don't have information about the candidates. they actually have almost too much information. they just can't decide which of the two bad choices they are going to go with. i think it's going to be very hard to sway that small group of people who yet have to form an opinion out there. >> of course, early voting is starting relatively soon in lots of places. >> exactly. >> to stay on the super pac side for a second, priorities usa has been raising a fair -- have been doing pretty well in terms of

fund-raising. are things picking up there or slowing down as we get closer to election day? >> so far their fund-raising has been pretty consistent over the last several months. we had the final numbers through july. we will see the august numbers on september 20th. they have a pretty large goal of raising i think a couple hundred million dollars. we will see if they reach that. but there's no question that wealthy democratic donors feel much more motivated to invest in this presidential campaign than wealthy republicans. there's a huge disparity, one we haven't really seen in the last few cycles on that front. >> thank you both. great having you on. we'll be right back. you both have a

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>> weeks and weeks. debates and debates. >> just fantastic. meantime, watch the interview with vladimir putin on bloomberg politics.com. we say to you sayonara. >> coming up, "hardball with chris matthews." lady and gentleman, state your engines. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in new york. after a week with kathleen, michael, sarah, thomas, caroline, julie and brendan i'm back to "hardball." we have an exciting show tonight starting with the brutal challenge now facing republican candidate donald trump. also tonight, the negative stories about now breaking on former president bill clinton and on trump. plus the fear that russia meaning vladimir putin is playing mischief with our