capitol dome, baby, it is back. it looks good, feels good. we missed you. it's fun to see. there is still, i get a chill when you fly into national, you look over, and you see the dome. good to have it back. that's all for tonight. we'll be back tomorrow with more "mtp daily." "with all due respect," though, starts right now. >> i'm john heilemann. >> and i'm donny deutsch. and with all due respect to those who are mocking donald trump's assertion that his campaign events are form of exercise -- >> well, it's a lot of work, you know, when i'm speaking between 15,000 and 20,000 people and i'm up there using a lot of motion. i guess that's a form of exercise. >> who are you to judge how a man uses his hands?

♪ i got tired watching that. okay, don't sweat the small stuff, boys and girls. tonight democrats' hearts are going thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, because there's some new polls the that suggest a dead heat. a cbs/"new york times" national poll has hillary clinton essentially tied with donald trump. she's up 46-44%, which is within the margin of error. and yesterday a poll had trump vetoing clinton in nevada, the state where clinton, president obama won by six points in 2012. after three days spent resting with pneumonia, hillary clinton returned to the campaign trail, and taking the stage the familiar course of "i feel good," hillary, we knew what you would. afterwards, hillary took some

questions by the press, including one by nbc's andrea mitchell, who asked when exactly clinton informed her running mate, tim kaine, about her pneumonia diagnosis? >> i communicated with tim, i talked to him again last night. he has been a great partner and he's going to be a great vice president. we communicated. we have communicated. but i am not going to go into our personal conversations. and i feel very comfortable and confident about our relationship and i really look forward to working with him closely. >> okay. john, hillary tease fir's first has she put this health issue behind her and more important, where does she go from here? >> donny, with i think there's a whole lot to cover in this topic. i think there's going to be a lot of focus on her and a lot of scrutiny, obviously, in the wake of this health incident that she had. but if she continues to look as she looked today in north carolina, if she looks strong, if she looks stable, if she doesn't have anything else, any other incidents that take place that relate to her health, i think this thing is now in the

rearview mirror for her. but, man, she is looking at a whole -- not a whole new race, i mean, some people would say this race is always going to be close, and certainly, that's the talking point out of the clinton campaign, but she's got a very different environment right now, that she's dealing with. a month ago, you had democrats rubbing their hands together and thinking you could have a landslide coming. now democrats broadly are freaking out about how close this race is. >> absolutely, john. the health is not her physical health. her health is obviously about her campaign. and here's what's changed. and i've always said this election is about, is it going to be, do you choose, which is worse? the untrustworthy one likable, competent, establishment candidate, or the new, unbalanced, potentially dangerous, racist candidate? and what's happened in the last three weeks is basically on the clinton side, the untrustworthy stuff, the unlikable stuff has gone up, and trump, by going to mexico and not causing a riot, by going into african-american communities, by giving speeches

where there have been no horrible negatives, acting normal, the scary part, the unhinged part has gone down. and that's what you're seeing in these polls right now. >> right. one of the things that's interesting, you know, somebody asked the question yesterday to our pollster, ann seltzer, about what was going on in ohio, and our poll that we put out yesterday that had caused a lot of people to get freaked out on the democratic side. whether it was that trump was gaining strength in ohio or clinton was fading. and when seltzer looked into the numbers, it seems what's happened so far is that clinton support has faded a little bit. that's bad news, as it suggests that the campaign is not going as well as it should for her. but it's good news in the sense that some of it's probably reflecting this health issue. and if clinton puts that behind her and moves forward and starts making both an aggressive case against trump and putting forward some kind of positive vision on her side, she could probably get some of that fading support to whatever the opposite of fade is. to kind of get some of that support back and put herself back in a better position in the race. >> absolutely. let's not forget, those polls

were taken friday through monday, the worst two days in terms of deplorable baskets, and as far as her health issues. the other scary thing for her, as far as some of those numbers is the enthusiasm numbers are leaning very heavily towards trump. and as you know better than anybody, it's where is the pulse? where's the excitement, where's the enthusiasm? and her candidates are -- her backers are still much more begrudging than his are. okay, continuing our health watch of the candidates that interview donald trump did with dr. oz finally aired today, revealing a summary of trump's latest physical exam. we now know that he tapes a type of drug that lowers cholesterol, and that trump's testosterone level is a whopping 441 and that the 6'3" republican nominee is a wee bit underweight at 236 pounds. and in case you're wondering, that's a little too heavy for trump's liking. >> i think i could lose a little weight. i've always been a little bit this way, you know? i've sort of always been that way. probably a good swimmer, but i've always been this way.

i think that, yeah, if i had one thing, i would like to lose weight. it's tough, because of the way i live. but the one thing i would like to do is be able to drop 15 to 20 pounds. it would be good. >> okay, trump's campaign released only a very brief summary of his health from his doctor. and while there are some details about his blood pressure and the last time he got a colonoscopy, it's less than what was expected when his campaign said weeks ago that trump was going to publicize his medical records and less information that be what hillary clinton's team has made public. john, trump remains by any standard the least transparent candidate for president in our lifetime. will there come a time that he's going to pay a price for this opaqueness? >> first of all, i want to say, donny, in the issues of full disclosure, what's your testosterone level? >> you know, i'm afraid to take it, because it's just -- i don't think it's going to be very good. that's a whole other discussion. i talk to my therapist about this. but we don't want to talk about that today. >> donny, i think you'd break the scale. you would be 500 or 600. i don't know if that's possible, but i'm sure you're way up there. it is the case that trump

remains the at least transparent party nominee in our lifetimes. and i think one of the big things that's happened over the last few weeks is that we're starting to finally see the reporters and others, kind of really starting to turn their scrutiny towards trump and trying to hold them accountable to a greater degree than they've been held accountable so far. whether that will stick to them or not, i know there are people all over the country that evening, if we reporters just do our jobs and talk enough about the many areas where trump is engaged in behavior, whether it's on his charitable foundation, whether it's involved with his tax records, both of which are areas of huge concern, but if we focus all of four ire on them, that will somehow change the populist for voters in the electorate and i'm not 100% sure that's true. we should do it. all of our colleagues, we should do it. but i'm not sure that will necessarily mean there will be some huge drop-off in his support. >> john, i absolutely agree with you. there's an advertising term called permission to believe. to get a consumer to buy a product, you've got to give them permission to believe. trump supporters want to believe

in him, regardless. you say, well, his charitable foundation, he took the money on somebody else's name and gave it, well, he's kind of a good businessman. they are so distraught by the status quo, there is such dislike for hillary clinton, that unless he goes rogue and starts saying horrifically hateful, horrifically bigot eed things, it doesn't stick. the hateful things stick, the lies don't stick, the cover-ups don't stick, the hateful stuff sticks. this stuff doesn't stick. >> i think part of the problem with this discussion for a lot of us is that there is a whole, for people like you and people like me, donny, and a lot of other people, our lives have gotten better over the last 20 to 25 years. there are a lot of people in this country who have seen nothing but stay sis, and in some cases, degradation of their lives economically speaking over decades. and they look at establishment politicians on the left and the right. they've had a clinton, a bush,, an obama and nothing's gotten better. a lot's gotten worse. and some of them that don't even agree with a lot of the thing trump has said or done, they're

still willing to roll the dice with trump, because they think it couldn't get worse, which points to the strategic imperative for the clinton campaign, at least one of them. >> they call him a snake oil salesman, and what a snake oil salesman does, when you've tried everything else for your cure, trust me, this will cure it, and people say, i have to believe it. that's what's going on here. all right, wup can be you've got mail and we know, because some hackers probably have posted it online. we'll talk about colin powell's inbox and more right after these messages from our sponsors. healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever i choose. the east and the west are mine. the north and the south are mine. all seems beautiful to me.

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and here's your donald trump outreach update. yesterday as part of donald trump's outreach to african-american voters, donald trump spoke at a predominately church in flint, michigan, and on dr. oz, trump said that prescription should not be required to buy birth control. trump and ivanka also rolled out their child care proposal that promised among other things, six weeks of paid paternity leave.

and after that pastor interrupted mid-speech, trump returned the favor this morning with a classic phoner with his good friends"fox & friends". >> the treatment was great, but something was up, because i noticed she was so nervous when she introduced me and she called nbc "abc." she said, abc was that the owner of a nbc noeretwork, and she sa he owns abc and we sort of smiled together. and when she got up to introduce me, she was so nervous, she was shaking, and i said, wow, this is kind of strange. and then she came up. so she had that in mind, there's no question about it. >> clinton during her meeting later this afternoon called trump's comments insulting and wrong. and also in an interview with "cosmopolitan" magazine, ivanka had a trouble answering a question about gay men who adopt. and she also had to answer

questions about something her father said saying pregnancy is an inconvenient thing to business. it seems like every time he reaches out to non-base voters, it blows up in his face. will he continue trying to reach out? >> i think he'll continue to try to do it, for reasons we talked about weeks ago, when he started his ostensible minority outreach, where he's trying to assuage the fears of a lot of moderate suburban republicans, especially suburban republican women. i don't think it's going to work for him with those groups. and you can see that today. he does the african-american, the trip to flint, he talks to this african-american pastor, and the next day, he's taking shots at her on television. i would express outrage, the way that hillary clinton did, saying, well, it's insulting, but he attacked the pope previously. so you think if you can get away with attacking the pope and all the other people that trump's attacked, he has no compunction about going after someone that no normal politician would go after to say -- which is to say, a female african-american

minister -- >> not only did he go after, he lied. in a subsequent interview, he said, basically people started booing her when she interrupted him and he said to the crowd, no, no, no, calm down. at certain points, they were heckling him and she said, no, he's our guest. so a blatant lie. when he gets in trouble, i think he should continue to do. the headline reads, child care. the headline reads, he went to mexico. but he goes mano y mano with a female african-american priest, that's when he loses. when he takes on the little guy. he lost america with the khans, because that was hateful and specific and at the little guy. that's what he loses. if he's going to reach out and can't stay away from that fire, he should keep his hands in his pocket. you can file this new topic under e-mail colon -- colin powell this week. e-mails from former secretary of state colin powell were hacked and leaked and include some colorful rhetoric. colin powell calls donald trump

a national disgrace and on hillary clinton, everything clinton touches he kind of screws up, and she said that while clinton is a friend, she comes across a sleazy and made a reference to bill clinton's alleged infidelity. and trump responded on twitter saying, i was never a fan of colin powell, and after his weak understanding of weapons of mass destruction in iraq equals disaster, we can do much better. clinton dodged questions about powell and the e-mails. john, is this the year of the political hacks and obviously, this is the highest profile one we've ever seen. what kind of fallout can we see, expect from this leak, and in general, going forward in the next 55 days in this election, and as a country? >> let's start with the easiest one here. just as the level of colin powell, you know, this guy has been the most sought-after endorsement of both parties ever since -- well, for the last two election cycles. barack obama had his endorsement in 2008. it was a big deal when he got it. everyone expected him to endorse

obama again in 2012, but he did. i think he was one of the big names that was still out there in terms of endorsements and this will now make that endorsement somewhat tainted, even if he decides to do one, just because he's now out there as having criticized both sides. it's an interesting one of these stories. where, normally, if powell had just attacked trump the way he did, the left would be cheering. instead, he attacked both trump and both clintons. so no one knows quite what to make of it, except that apparently colin powell has a lot saltier language in his public e-mails than he does in his television appearances. >> it does take him out of the endorsement business, but i don't think we're in the endorsement business in the election. both of these candidates are 100% awareness level. so polarizing. i don't think any surrogate is going to swing someone way or another. the scary thing for me is on a bigger level, us as a society. needs to be wake-up call for us. there is not a human being, with the exception of you, john, if you went into their e-mails, their texts, you're going to find things that are nasty. that's how we communicate as an individual versus publicly. a very scary wake-up call for all of us.

>> well, look. we've seen these dnc e-mail hacks, and so far, some of them have been quite explosive politically, but none have had flavor and contour and texture and personality. this is the first one that's had that, with a famous person saying things that are genuinely embarrassing to him and others. i think there's a kind of -- it kind of forebodes, it foretells future releases of this kind. we're waiting for weeks. we're waiting for julian assange to drop some more e-mails. i think some of them could be quite impactful, if they are more, in this direction. >> very scary stuff. coming up, donald trump gave a speech about taxes today. we will talk about that, and more, right after this.

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ask your doctor if you're tresiba® ready. ♪ tresiba® ready ♪ welcome back. joining us now is laura tyson, the former head of the council on economic advisers under president clinton and now a professor of business and economics out at the university of california, berkeley. professor tyson, good to have you with us. donald trump delivered his tax speech today. just give me your big overview at this point. what do you make of it? >> well, it was a speech that started with taxes and focused very muchtaxes. it made an argument that we have heard many times before, that really is not supported by data and it's not supported by analysis. that is, if you have very large tax cuts that disproportionately favor the top through a trickle-down supply-side effect, that you will gain so much

economic growth that there will be no increase to the deficit, no increase to the debt. he actually put together some remarkable numbers. he started out with the size of his tax cut and then took away half of the effect on the deficit, saying, well, that would just be growth. he then said his regulatory reforms, that would be another dose of growth. and at the end of the day, well, if we had any deficit reduction leftover, it would just be waste, fraud, and abuse. that was -- the plan was not a plan. it is not a plan and it does not have evidence behind it. >> laura, i believe what you're saying is you consider this voodoo economics. would that be a fair description of what you're saying? >> i didn't use that term. it has been used before to familiarize a very different approach. we can call it voodoo economics. trickle-down economics. supply-side economics. that is not verified in data or in analysis. >> so, laura, one of the things trump does here is he takes the tax code and says, let's go for something a lot of conservatives

have wanted and a lot of non-conservatives, and have a simpler code. he's talking about three tax bra brackets. in principle, is that a good idea, and does it make any sense to you whatsoever? >> well, so, i don't think that the issue of simplification is really an issue around tax brackets. after all, three brackets, you just go and figure out what brackett you're in. this is actually about the way that our deductions and credit system works. so if the issue is simplicity, i would say this is not an issue of the brackets. this is an issue of how our credits and deductions work. and i think that actually, the issue of the brackets is really an issue of the rates. it really is an issue, for example, of what the top rate should pay. and one of the things that he didn't mention this morning, but it's very, very important, is that in his corporate tax policy, where he's saying 15%, a

lot of the income that is partnership income and high income individual's income, would actually fall to the 15% rate. it actually would not be at his top rate anymore. so there's other things going on there. so, it is important to look at the fine print. i don't think three brackets is the issue of simplicity. it's certainly -- the real issue here is, what's the amount of tax revenue lost? who is paying the taxes. what happens to the deficits. what do you have to cut in order to have a sustainable debt going forward. if you use this kind of massive tax cut disproportionately biased to the wealthy. >> laura, it's donny. the answer to that question, it's $3 trillion. but we could spend the next hour talking about trickle-down economics and all the points of his plan. i want you to take off your economics hat for a second and just put on your mom hat, your working hat, your out-to-dinner hat. i have not had one discussion

are anybody about either candidate about their tax plans. this election, i have never seen an election that is less independent on issues, that is fewer guttural. i can't stand this one, i can't stand that one. does it even matter what trump is coming out as his tax plan. forget that we can dump all over as you have and i could spend the next half hour, it's almost irrelevant at this point. >> is that addressed to me? i'm an economist, and i tend to want to, if i go into those kind of conversations, i tend to want to get people to talk about the economic issues. maybe it's true that in an initial conversation, people are talking about something else, but i am an economic adviser, and i tend to look at the two candidates in terms of what they are proposing economically. i think she has a very sound, very sensible plan that actually includes some tax cuts. for example, there's some simplification in tax cuts for small businesses, very

important. she has some very important pro-growth investments, infrastructure and education, i'll take for example. he says nothing about education. i would say on the stuff we've heard about this week, child care and paid leave. if you look at this, i can change the conversation at a dinner party by basically saying, you know, we are the only country of theeveloped countries without paid leave. and what she has offered is a plan that is sensible in terms of the extent of time, in terms of the fact that it would cover mothers and fathers, in terms of the replacement value of the wages. those are things which all the other advanced industrial countries are already doing. and they're doing fine! they're doing fine! so, i tend to want to turn it back to the issues. >> i know you do, because you are an economist. let me turn it to the dumber guy, john. john, you -- this is what you do for a living. do you even talk about taxes with people? do you see any voter bringing -- i've never seen anything like

this. even to the point, as laura said, where you can debunk everything trump said, i'm going to go back to teflon don, it doesn't matter. the issues don't seem to matter, at least, the substantiatives of the issues don't seem to matter. >> well, i think -- donny, i think it's important -- and i'm with laura tyson on this, in the sense that if we have a dead heat race right now, one of the things we have to try to do over the course of the next two months is to try to talk about what it would mean if donald trump became president of the united states. and these are the policies he says he's going to pursue. so it may not matter to a lot of people at this motel, but one of the jobs that we have and one of the jobs that certainly the clinton campaign has, is to try to elucidate what the impact would be if donald trump's policies were implemented. laura, let me turn the conversation back to you on this front. how do you explain the appeal that donald trump seems to have to working class voters across the country, when the policies that he's putting forward are, in your judgment, obviously bad for most working americans, especially when it comes to this tax plan? >> well, you're the political

pundit, not i. what i can say, i understand makes some sense is that there is a fraction of the trump voters who, indeed, have had a difficult time. if you look -- look at that census report that just came out this week. there was a lot of great news in that for the median family. there was a lot of great news in that for ler and middle income families. but on the other hand, if you go back to where they were in 2000, or if you go back to where they were in 19 -- earlier, some of these numbers, 1993, 2000, what you see is that the median household income has actually not recovered to its previous peak. so, therefore, there are a lot of people who are -- they don't think the economy's working for them. they're looking for an alternative. they're looking for an alternative. >> we've got to wrap it up, laura. care, the no.1 choice of dentists. compared to oral-b 7000, philips sonicare flexcare platinum

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welcome back, sports fans.

we are moving on to our next guest, the great mike murphy. republican superstrategist, the guy who ran right to rise for jeb bush, not with a huge amount of success, but who is one of our favorite guests, because he is so damned smart. mike, thanks to you for coming on the show. i want to ask you this question. we should say to everybody who doesn't already know this, mike is vociferously and adamantly, never trump. but i want to ask you a question of ideology. we had donald trump jr. on the air and invoked the question of gas chambers. the clinton campaign jumped on it. their director of jewish outreach said this was ridiculous and an comable for him to use that in a casual conversation. there's a lot of discussion about other things the trump campaign has done, that's traded anti-semitism. what's your view about what's happening in terms of the campaign's impulses and what it gets out of, continuie ining to

back to these tropes? >> it's a hard one to tifigure out. they go off today his attack on the pastor, or this gas chamber thing, and i don't know the full context of. >> john, the viewers -- because it's important. because i was offended when i saw it. donald trump said that he's talking about hillary clinton. the media has been her number one -- >> donald trump jr., yes, sir. the media has been her number one surrogate in this. without the media, this wouldn't even be a contest, but the media has built her up. they have let her slide on every indiscrepancy, on every lie, on every dnc game trying to get bernie sanders out of this thing. if republicans were doing that, they would be warming up the gas chamber right now. >> it's totally untoward and it's offensive. these guys, they don't have the -- it's not a normal campaign. it's not really a normal anything. and they fly by the seat of their pant, so you get this kind of language. and you know, they pay a price for it. but it's a pattern that never ends and it will continue in the

future. >> john, it's interesting -- i didn't know we were going to talk about that today. i was completely taken aback by that as a jew, that it's anybody's part of their vernacul vernacular, i didn't even know that expression existed, warming up the gas chambers, i think he owes all jews an apology for that. >> and i would like to hear something from the candidate about that. you can have a family member that says something offensive, but what we're judging in a campaign is the quality of a person who runs for president, who becomes the moral authority of the country, but he won't. this is donald trump. >> this was donald trump jr.. >> yeah, but he was speaking as a surrogate for his dad. the campaign owns this and should do something about it. >> the candidate has been offered many, many opportunities to distance himselves or repudiate various kind of anti-semitic tropes that have appeared on tweets and anti-semitic people that they have re-tweeted various situations, never has done it. i can't really figure out what he thinks he's getting out of

that. but mike, let me ask you a question about the state of the race right now. i saw you out in l.a., right before labor day weekend. you and bob shrum. you told me the race was over, that friday before labor day. it doesn't seem like the race is over right now. what's going on? >> well, shrum said it would probably over and i said trump was going to lose, but we all work in a business, where it's unacceptable for a race to be over. every day has news. now we've got new polling data that shows, in the bouncy day-to-day, somewhat silly manner of polling data, the race tightening a little bit. but every time the race tightens, which starts all these alarm bells ringing, of, oh, my goodness, it's tight, it's tight, it's never trump rising as hillary clinton dropping down. they're both in the low 40s. i think there's a new 42-42 poll coming out, which means they're both sitting down on the party base vote. it means people don't like either of them. the question is, what is the vote between 23 or 23 or 48 to

49 or 50 depending on what the third party folks do, what does that look like that have to land somewhere. and they look a lot more like anti-the trump than pro-trump voters. >> you cannot argue with the momentum. and i know you've advised for the red team. let me put you on the blue team for a second. if i was advising hillary, and i would like to know what you would say. i would say at this point, you cannot run out the clock. and you cannot merely just say, he's dangerous. you have to go on the offense. you have to go in a very prosecutorial kind of way, so laser-sharp, so aggressive, back him up. you can't just play defense or play neutral at this point. correct or incorrect? >> i never believe flaying defense, but i think the offense that hillary needs to play is on hillary. what's holding hillary back is hillary's problems and they're enormous. >> i don't think you're going to change that. >> trump's problems are built in, and it's going to be hard to make those much worse. but the problem is, people rejecting hillary clinton, for a lot of reasons that her campaign have created. they have to up that guam to take advantage of the structural advantage. they've had a terrible ten days, which is why things are

tightening up in these polls, in my view. >> donny, i'm going to continue -- mike, i'm going to continue what donny just said, make you basically act like a hillary clinton adviser at this point. if the problem is enthusiasm among members of the obama coalition, what would you advise her to do to fix that problem? >> well, first, if i've got to give hillary advice, next time, i don't want water, i would like something a little stronger here. i don't think the problem is really base enthusiasm, but you turn the president lose. her problem is swing voters, who tend to be more fiscally conservative or looking for somewhere to land, and she's got to roll out a welcome mat for them. and be careful of the ideological stuff that makes it very hard for swing voters who tend to be more fiscally conservative, and some disaffected republicans to land with her. i would not double down on republican base politics. and i think the president and other surrogates in the minority community can do some of that, but look at those polls. trump is losing minorities by essentially infinity. that's not their problem. their problem is swing voters, who don't like hillary and don't

like trump. and they've got to win that. >> john, let me ask your enthusiasm. i would up the enthusiasm for the fear of trump. that is the hillary play. you have to make -- you have to disqualify him. you are not going to change the opinion of hillary clinton. he is so all over the place on any given day, you can spike him or get in the other direction. >> they've been investing a lot in that. >> you have to poke him to make him -- >> bring on the debates, because trump will always in the end be trump. >> mike murphy, thank you. when we come back, a look into trump's charitable giving or lack thereof. and if you're listening to us in washington, d.c., you can now listen to us on radio bloomberg 91.9 f.m. we'll be right back. isaac hou has mastered gravity defying moves to amaze his audience. great show. here you go. now he's added a new routine. making depositing a check seem so effortless. easy to use chase technology, for whatever you're trying to master. isaac, are you ready?

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plus you get a free carfax® report with every listing start your used car search at carfax.com we're joined now by a man whose reporting has been called, quote, disgusting by eric trump, and that's probably because he's a journalist who has been doing the most digging into the trump foundation over the past few months. he's been chasing leads and collecting extensive notes, trying to get to the bottom of trump's charitable givings. and he joins us now from washington, d.c., at the "washington post" newsroom. david fahrenthold, thanks for joining us. i happen to think your reporting is fantastic. i know you've spoken to over 300 charities at the trump foundation that has quote/unquote given money to. i would love you to start with an anecdote, because it kind of sums everything up about the money that the trump foundation gave for the palm beach police association, then held an event in mar-a-lago. tell us kind of the little trail there and i think it sums

everything up. >> sure. it's important to know that donald trump's business in mar-a-lago really depends on charities. it depends on being in the good graces of charities. for instance, the palm beach police foundation holds one of the biggest events in palm beach. they rent out mar-a-lago, pay $270,000 for one night. so this is a charity whose business is very important to donald trump. a few years ago, he decides he wants to give them a donation. sort of to keep in their good graces. so he does it, but he doesn't actually give his own money out of his own pocket. instead, he goes to the foundation of a friend of his who's now dead. he asks that friend's foundation, hey, look, i'm raising money for the palm beach police foundation, can you give me a little bit. they say, sure, here's $150,000. well, trump takes their money, but he tells them, don't give it straight to palm beach, give it to me. trump takes their money and gives it himself to the palm beach police foundation under his own name and he gets a credit, a big award, a giant crystal palm tree at the next policeman's ball for his selfless support. he's managed to keep a customer support and get this big award

for philanthropy and hasn't used any of his own money, it was other people's money. >> and made $260,000 as a result of it. >> a great country. >> the totality of your work is great. so what's the takeaway? people are looking at all the work you're doing and people are saying, it looks like these charities are totally corrupt. is that the kind of conclusion you're ready to draw at this point? >> with trump, it's not so much, i guess, corruption. there are cases where it seems like they've broken irs rules and violated the law. but what's interesting about this is sort of a test of a -- a moral test of trump. this is a guy who's very, very wealthy. he lives among very, very wealthy people. and those folks often feel a sense to give back to the community that is live in and the institutions that help them. and what we see about trump, all the evidence points to the tact that he does not feel that responsibility. he knows he has to look charitable, and instead, he goes and finds other people that are helping to pay his philanthropy for him. he's not seeking to have the actual sacrifice of

philanthropy, he's seeking to have the appearance of it, and seeking to have other people to pay for him to have the appearance of that. >> right. and david, i want to ask you a question about taxes the. you know, it seems to me that one of the big stories you've been on, of course, is the illegal donation that the trump charity, the trump foundation gave to pam bondi's super pac or pac. the question that we always get asked is, what do we actually learn if we had donald trump's tax returns? from the standpoint of what you're looking at, what would you learn if we had donald trump's tax returns? >> for me, the biggest thing would be if he gives any money out of his own pocket to charity. and what his folks have told us all along is, yes, the trump foundation, he hasn't given any must be to the donald j. trump foundation since 2008, but there's all this money he gives out of his own pocket, privately, personally, that he doesn't want people to know about. i haven't found any evidence that's true. we've called 320 charities that are close to him. if we could see his tax returns, we would know the truth, whether he's given away anything or as

much as he said. >> david, i know this started with the money that he gave to the veterans that he hadn't given until he was called on it. i find this one of the most reps rensable things, to not be gifg your own money, giving other people's money and taking the credit for being charitable is reprehensible from a moral point of view. david fahrenthold, thank you very much. this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain and protect my joints from further damage. this is humira helping me go further. humira works for many adults. it targets and helps to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. humira has been clinically studied for over 18 years. humira can lower your ability to fight 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.

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we are joined now by two of our favorite political reporters, the great kasie hunt of nbc news, who is by the brooklyn bridge, and the magnificent james pindell of the "boston globe" who is in beantown. great to have you. tipt to start with you, kasie. hillary clinton back on the campaign trail today, doing an event, doing an avail. what are your takeaways from the first days back out there? >> reporter: john, i think first and foremost, her team is trying

to use humor to handle this event. brian fallon, for example sent me a statement last night about trump talking about her lying in bed, by saying, donald seems cranky, maybe he needs a happy meal. and of course, her staff had her come out to "i feel good" by james brown today. so, i think, you know, that's how they're trying to kind of make light of what's gone on in the past three days. and to a certain extent, how else are you going to handle it. but clinton herself seemed to use this as a what i to talk about the campaign in a broader sense. she talked about how she spent three days at home, and how this has made her more reflective, the speech he gave in north carolina, kind of a little more thoughtful in some ways, a little more personal. and they clearly want to make sure they're sending the image that she's still just trying to pick up right where she left off. this is not something where they need a campaign reset. i think that's part of why you saw her go right back out and talk to reporters the today, like she had been, before she got hit with this pneumonia. >> a memo to our friends in

brooklyn, i believe it's the case that james brown may have died of pneumonia, so you may want to rethink that music, when you have hillary clinton come out on stage next time. james, i've got to ask you, i'm up in new hampshire right now. this is a state you know well. suddenly like a lot of battleground states, this state looks close, with when it didn't look that close a few weeks ago. so what's changing here on the ground where i am in new hampshire, where donald trump will be shortly? what's changing that's making it new lie tight here? >> well, i think you have a couple of things. one of them is the fact that donald trump has largely been silent. he has not had a new controversy. and you're also finding that republicans following a tuesday state primary in a number of races, they're beginning to coalesce behind him. if you look at some of those numbers, republicans are coming behind him more. the real battleground, of course, are going to be independent voters. and one thing you're finding up there, i'm sure, when you're up there, john, is that the dynamic in new hampshire is the same as it is in iowa or in florida or ohio or north carolina, where hillary clinton has a large field operation.

they have well over 150 staffers in the state. and donald trump has a very small operation, very message-driven. however, you have to give donald trump credit for something. he is showing up. hillary clinton has not been here since yuan appearance with bernie sanders, when he endorsed her since the primary season. i think this is the third time he's been here in a month. >> cakasie, let's put the healt issue aside for hillary and pretend that never happened. let's talk about the control issues. a several weeks back, he was in bad shape, they rebooted in terms of staff and more importantly in terms of message. obviously, hillary clinton is not changing staff. are you getting any inclinations from her people that there is going to be some strategic shifts now, that the polls, no matter how you look at them, have changed dramatically in the last few weeks? >> donny, i think that there is an acknowledgement inside the clinton campaign, that they need to do more than just prosecute donald trump. i heard you guys talking earlier in the show, and i think that it may have been howard that was

making the point that they have been very effective over the summer, in criticizing trump. and she clearly found her footing doing that. and the challenge, and jen palmieri talked about this a little bit on the plane today with reporters, the challenge is making sure that machtches hilly clinton's message. my sense from talking to them privately is that that what's they're feeling in these polls. they feel like they need to move some of those numbers by making the affirmative case for her. and she was set to do that, starting this week, until she was sidelined briefly by this pneumonia. so, i think, you know, that's what the -- that's their challenge going forward. now, they will also push back and say, some of these polls we're now seeing likely voter screens instead of registered voter screens. that's a switch made by pollsters after labor day. and basically, the way that the pollsters are cutting the data is giving us a sense that this race might be closer. so the challenge, of course, is what assumption do you make about how many white working class, especially male voters are going to show up, and how many of them will act

differently than they have in the past. that is, maybe break away from democratic union tendencies and move on to the republican side of the ledger. so i think that's part of why you've seen hillary clinton spend a lot more time in pennsylvania, for example, than in new hampshire, where james is. she's going to be back in philadelphia again on monday. i feel like i've spent the last three weeks in pennsylvania. >> james, picking up on kasie's point, here's a person who's been in the public eye for some 30-odd years. to say that her negatives are baked in is an understatement. i don't think she can move her affirmatives up. and i think you do have to stay on the negative. i would love your thoughts on that. one thing that has changed. i think you saw this at the beginning of her speech today in north carolina. this has become a campaign really over the last month or so, that has been entirely about the particular candidates. we're discussing who is more racist one week, but we weren't discussing racism. we were discussing this week, who's healthier, but we aren't discussing health care. we're discussing hillary clinton's e-mails, but winter

discussing whether or not the nsa should snoop on yours. it's been campaia campaign that really been based on the candidates, not the voters, and one thing you saw whether in the affirmative or not is a different focus from hillary clinton that she's going to be more focused on the voters and one of the things you'll have to see from donald trump is whether he makes that pivot the same way. >> kasie -- >> john, i'm curious -- >> go ahead, john. >> i'm curious one thing, about new hampshire, you thought some of the things that are driving the race are the same as some of the things in the battleground states. one thing that's true, it's not a very large non-white population here. today, i was up here with tim kaine, and he was making a number of pitches the directly to millennial voters, which is a big part of the obama coalition that is represented in new hampshire. what do you think the clinton campaign believes it has to do or can do to try to generate some type of enthusiasm among

millennial voters, who had been so strongly in favor of bernie sanders in this state and others? >> that is a big challenge. how do they drive out these millennial voters. because right now, they have not been that enthusiastic. one past that hillary clinton has found in new hampshire, whether it's her comeback in 2008 or even when she was riding high for a while in new hampshire is among women. so that sweet spot of millennial women is what they're really going after. we've seen in that their surrogates, but that is absolutely the hot spot for them. >> kasie, another variation on the same question. we see them sending this weekend, out to ohio. now that the alarm bells have been rung in ohio thanks to bloomberg politics poll and a couple of other polls in ohio, they're sending elizabeth warren and bernie sanders into ohio this weekend to try to fire up the democratic base and their coalition. do you have a sense that brooklyn is now starting to become alarmed about this enthusiasm gap that we're seeing in the polls? >> i do think that there is a

sense that this is something that is potentially growing and potentially problematic. and i -- you could really tell that, actually, on the trail this week with president obama, who campaigned for her in philadelphia. you could hear, and if you kind of read between the lines of that speech, you could tell that he and his team are very aware that there is the potential for a lot of the people that showed up for him, and a lot of -- you know, he pulled so many new people into the system, there's really no good way to tell, necessarily, who among those new people is going to stick around and vote for hillary clinton. and that, i think, is really the challenge here. and obviously, ohio is kind of ground zero for all of this, right? this is a state where you're seeing a republican who's running a strong race, rob portman, polling far ahead of the democrat. that as well as the tightening polls at the presidential level, yeah, there are definitely alarm bells. so i think you have to combine,

in the case of elizabeth warren and bernie sanders, the progressive millennial base with african-american voters, and making sure those turnout levels are where they were for obama. that's actually pretty cha challenging at this point. >> kasie, ten seconds, i'll ask james the same question. what do the clinton people have to do nine days from now nah debate? one sentence. >> reporter: they have to not level donald trump exceed expectations. >> james, i know you're not working on the campaign, but what would you -- what would you think that donald trump needs to do, in one sentence, in that debate? >> make it not about the issues and entirely about her. >> thank you so much. we'll be right back, guys. thanks. my belly pain and constipation?

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all seems beautiful to me. thanks so my hero, john heilemann, for letting me protect the studio while he is happy warrioring. and head to bloomberg politics.com and head to "bloomberg businessweek's" special election issue, while

you're there. sign out up for bloomberg politics's midday newsletter. it's called the brief and it has everything you need to know about the 2016 race each day. thanks for having me, guys. see you tomorrow. sayonara. >> "hardball" with chris matthews is next. this race is even. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. back in the saddle again. our friend is a friend -- well, kind of. hillary clinton made her first appearance back on the campaign trail today, after taking time off to rest up with her pneumonia. she's back facing new polls that snow the wind a to the back of her opponent, donald trump. they include a brand new "new york times"/cbs poll out today that has the race, catch this, 42-42. meanwhile, trump is