from tonight. that is tanl most associated with the libertarian party, that spiney rodent. this game is in washington, d.c., never, ever voted for a republican president, so we're assuming they had to stock up on a few more donkeys than elephants, but you never know. by the way, there is something at stake tonight. home field advantage during the first round of the playoffs. so, now, i am a journalist, so i'm not going to take sides, but one week from today, i would like to be at nationals park for game one. that's all we have for tonight. we'll be back on monday for more "mtp daily." "with all due respect" starts 15 seconds left. >> it's 3:00 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. but there's an android phone in the white house and it's blowing up. something is happening in the world or on tv or on twitter. your vote will decide who does the subtweeting. whether it's someone who already knows the world's beauty pageant winners, knows the ratings and the fake online polls, someone with insomnia and ready to react

to any bait whatsoever. it's 3:00 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. who do you want tweeting? baby, baby, please let me hold, i want to make him stay up all night, yeah, we do, in the words of the immortal talking heads. welcome to the latest edition of the pre-dawn dawn after monday's debate, donald trump's campaign has been trying to swat down stories about dysfunction within the ranks, while also cleaning up after trump's fat shaming of alicia machado. so what's a presidential candidate to do when he's up in the middle of the night thinking about the state of his campaign? as is his wont, trump turned to twitter. he first informed o his insomnia at 3:20 a.m. eastern time when he tweeted, quote, anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying "sources said," do not believe it.

there are no sources, they are just made-up lies. trump either fell asleep or got distracted somehow, god knows how, because the next thing we know, it was 5:14 a.m., and trump started a new round of attacks on machado. quote, wow! crooked hillary was duped and used by my worst miss u. hillary floated her as an angel without check herg past, which is terrible. five minutes later came another tweet. quote, using alicia m. in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that crooked hillary suffers from bad judgment. hillary was set up by a con. yes, he spelled "judgment" wrong, but that's not quite the point. >> but wait, there's more! it gets better, or worse. at 5:30 a.m. came this tweet, quote, did crooked hillary help disgusting check out sex tape and past alicia m. become a u.s. citizen so she could use her in the debate. today machado responded with a

post on instagram in spanish calling trump's attacks frightening. clinton thanked her for standing up to this. at a stop in coral springs florida, clinton released this sentiment and addressed the tweeting spree. >> i mean, really, who gets up at 3:00 in the morning to engage in a twitter attack against a former miss universe?! really? why es he do things like that? i mean, his latest twitter meltdown is unhinged, even for him. it proves yet again that he is temperamentally unfit to be president and commander in chief. >> late this afternoon, trump followed up with a final defe e defensive tweet. quote, for those few people knocking me for tweeting at 3:00 in the morning, at least you know i will be there, awake to answer the call.

donald j. trump, wtf? >> i like the idea that first the tweet, the defensive tweet, where he says, for the few people who think this is a mistake on my part. i -- we are asked constantly to try to psychoanalyze donald trump and sometimes it's kind of easy and sometimes it's kind of hard. this is one of those days where you think to yourself, i just can't imagine, i can't fathom what is going on inside that man's head to cause him to do what he did last night or early this morning. it is -- there is no plausible, explicable reason. there's no interest of his that's advanced. there's no way in which it gets him closer to the white house. and in fact, he is -- in a story like a fire that was starting to slightly burn out, the embers were starting to cool, he's just poured gasoline on the fire again by doing this thing. >> i am a member of the late-night lucky trump tweet club, about five or six weeks ago, 10:00 on a sunday night, just out of nowhere comes this tweet, donny deutsch, you're a loser, you eat, you know, palm dirt, or whatever, it was a typical trump kind of thing.

i remember thinking, wait a minute, it's 10:00 on a sunday night. this is what this guy is doing. and obviously, we saw the tweets here. here's the thing we have to start to do. because we could go on and on and on at how reprehensible, ridiculous, frightening it is. we need to start overlay this as if it's three months from now and it's january 22nd. and the behavior, think about this, he's president of the united states. and what's going to happen start in the morning with a morning briefing book that he's not capable of reading, because he can't focus, and if at some point, putin during the day says, "trump, you're a little man," where do we go from here? we have to start now overlaying and going, this is no longer funny. this is frightening to think that this man is potentially a president. it's reprehensible, it's vulgar, and it shows both not only temperamental issue, but stupidity. to have to use that word, stupidity. >> it is worth saying, first time we've ever had a presidential nominee invoking a sex tape. secondly, there is no sex tape. it's all made up, right? so, the thing about this is, if

you were sitting in the trump campaign right now and you've been thinking about the debate fallout, first of all, he had a bad debate. second, he made it worse by attacking machado. third, he's made it infinitely worse by attacking her again at the end of the week. you're now looking at a debate in eight or nine days where you've got to try to get to donald trump to perform better. and your candidate, rather than saying to you, as barack obama said to his people back in 2012 when he lost the first debate, i get it, i lost, how do i get better? donald trump believes he won the debate and believes that somehow doing these things are appropriate and somehow furthering his cause. if you were working for donald trump right now, you would be like, we are doomed. we are doomed. >> i know we're not here to talk about the upcoming debate, but he is so set up to fail there. because you know he's going to come at her with all the guns blazing, and that's going to backfire. that's why he didn't do it the first time. >> read your prompter, donny. >> okay. donald trump has been telling -- a little bit strong. -- has been telling the followers to follow the money. he is, of course, talking about donald trump, but that phrase works both ways, dude. two stories out this week again

suggest there has been some financial jigry, pokery going on in trump world. one is by "washington post" reporter david fahrenthold, who has a new peiece claiming the trump foundation never required the proper certification required by the state of new york for charities to socit money. another sa that trump's business secretly conducted business with cuba. >> i never did business in cuba. i heard this guy who has a very bad reputation as a reporter, you see what his record is. he wrote something about me and cuba. i never did anything in cuba. i never did a deal in cuba. >> also today, a d.c. judge released video of a trump deposition from june that was tied to lawsuits over a prominent chef, who offended by trump's comments about mexican being rapists, backed out of plans to open restaurants in his new hotel. okay, john, to what extent do these stories fly in the face, handicap his whole "follow the

money, hillary clinton" bravado. >> let's be clear, the first thing that's keeping the "follow the money corruption" argument trump is making the from break tlug is trump's behavior in the alicia machado and on other fronts, the fact he keeps getting in his own way of his message. but of course, there's been so much focus on the clinton foundation and hillary clinton's e-mail. all of it, i think, much of it, most of it, totally appropriate. but it's so out of proportion to what we see in the trump foundation, we see with trump university, we see that there is just -- there are infinitely -- not infinitely more, but there are just as many, if not more, and potentially more instances of obvious corruption, illegality, and so on on trump's part. and we're finally in a place in the campaign where some really good reporters like darren fahrenthold and kirk eichenwald, the reporter that trump trashed at "newsweek" about the cuba story, are training their focus on trump and those stories are starting to get traction and making it harder for donald trump to make his arguments. >> believe it or not, this was actually good news for donald trump. because trump has two

underpinnings of deficiencies, sleaze and hatred. the hatred sticks. the sleaze -- we've seen trump university. we've seen the story about the trump foundation where he literally took money out, charitable money out, and literally put it in his pocket by paying for legal fees. to your point, the hillary thing is different thing. the line is nowhere in the same place. but somehow, people let that -- oh, yeah, he's a businessman, that's what he does. even the zero taxes. oh, yeah, he's smart. the stuff that sticks, and this is why today i think it's good for trump, because we're off what we were just talking about, is the disabled reporter, is the khans, is, of course, the machado story, where it is this vulgar, unempathetic, disgusting, reprehensible behavior towards the little guy. that's what sticks. this stuff doesn't stick. >> well, you know, yes, certainly, the thing where trump is taking on private citizens, the ones that you mentioned, the those are the ones that are most salient. no doubt those are the ones that cause him the most political problems. but i will say, when he does things like he did in the debate, where he says things, that's just business, and it's great if i didn't pay taxes, it

does make him seem more like a plutocrat, and in that sense, not going to help him out with his white working class base. up next, what the polling tells us about the debate and its effect on the presidential race. we'll be right back with that. because, healthier doesn't happen all by itself. it needs to be earned every day. using wellness to keep away illness. and believing a single life can be made better by millions of others. as a health servicesnd innovation company optum powers modern healthcare by connecting every part of it. so while the world keeps searching for healthier we're here to make healthier happen. fixodent plus adhesives. there's a denture adhesive that holds strong until evening. just one application gives you superior hold even at the end of the day fixodent. strong more like natural teeth.

this weekend, we've seen a flurry of polls that have been shaping perceptions about the presidential race. our cnn/orc survey showed hillary clinton as the clear winner of the first presidential debate by 30 percentage points. there are some new polls showing that clinton might be seeing rewards from that debate stage victory. clinton is leading among likely voters in a four-way race. in nevada, sufficient foakes university has clinton beating trump 34-48% in a three-way contest among likely voters. that's a four-point gain from the survey last month. in new hampshire, clinton is up seven points among likely voters, 42-35% pch that margin is four points smaller than it

was this past month, but higher in other granite state polls we've seen in recent weeks. and in detroit news, michigan poll, clinton leads trump by seven points. john, we're seeing some conflicting polls. where do we see this race right now? >> i don't think the polls are conflicting all that much. if you think about the polls, these polls that have been taken in this time since the debate has happened, you're seeing hillary clinton leading in all four of those battleground states. michigan and new hampshire are states where she is strong and she will likely win. nevada is a state where she has been behind, worrying a lot of people in the clinton world and in florida, it's been neck and neck. she's been a little bit of an uptick. we have national polls that come out in the next few days, having her moved up two or three points, strictly because of this debate. and she now has the psychological advantage, the confidence she has from having won that debate and seeing all this empirical evidence moving in the right direction. and seeing how donald trump is reacting, like, behaving like a lunatic. >> this is interesting. and she had -- the polls have moved overall two points already. and these polls do not take into account the last three days. this is where the real damage

was done. obviously, it was a moment on stage, the next day, but the real brouhaha has happened, and that's not in these polls. i think we'll continue to see this lead wide. and i think what you're starting to see now, and i've said this all along, when trump genuinely is going to feel like he's losing, and i really feel like it's getting away from him at this point. you can't unwind these things in a matter of a few weeks, and i think there'll be more of this nasty stuff for trump to come out to make it worse. hillary clinton has been vetted for 30 years by republicans. i wouldn't be surprised if the next debate, we don't find out about the next machado. i think this is the beginning of the end for trump. >> think about, you came into that first debate with a lot of pressure on hillary clinton. the polls were tightening in donald trump's favor. some polls had him, he seemed to be moving ahead. democrats are sort of freaking out. a lot of pressure on hillary clinton, because many democrats think if trump became president, it would be the apocalypse, right? she wins the debate and trump unravels, as you said, tuesday, we say, thursday, and especially this morning, friday morning, he is just unraveled. and you're right, the damage he's doing t himself with key

constituency groups and especially, especially those college-educated white women, who are kind of republican-leaning normally, who are looking at this and going, i don't want any part of that anymore. all right, hillary clinton tried to summon her inner jfk and her inner wjc today in ft. pierce, florida, where she unveiled a new plan to inspire more careers in public service across the country. the plan included proposals to triple the size of americorps and expand opportunities for older volunteers, while doubling college scholarships that people can earn through public service as well as loan forgiveness. clinton also said she wanted to grow the peace corps and create a part-time national service reserve modeled after the armed services reserve. >> i talk a lot about how america is an exceptional nation. we're not exceptional just because of the size of our military or the size of our economy. we're exceptional because of the generosity and ingenuity of our people. 39 days left. this is the choice.

do we lift each other up or do we tear each other down? >> clinton also called americorps one of her husband's proudest achievements as president in that speech, which echoed a key element of bill clinton's new democratmovement 1992. >> to do your part, you must pay it back. from your paychecks, or better yet, by going back home and serving your communities. just think of it. think of it. millions of energetic young men and women, serving their country by policing the streets or teaching the children tor carrying for the sick or working with the elderly or people with disabilities. or helping young people to stay off drugs and out of gangs, giving us all a sense of new hope and limitless possibilities. that's what this new covenant is

all about. >> that was bill clinton in his nomination speech back in 1992, donny. so my question here is, hillary clinton playing the national service call. she has a problem with young voters, whichs who this is kind of directed at. do you think this kind of proposal, harkening back to her husband's themes and also offering something, making a call to service for young people, will that have resonance politically in the final weeks of the campaign? >> the next 38 days, you'll see two tracks. you'll see the female suburban track voter that you talked about, and clearly, we know what's going on there. and you're going to see this millennial track. and what's ironic that millennials have not turned on to, and thing event because there was a great old ad campaign -- actually, it wasn't so great, because it didn't work. it's not your fault, it's an oldsmobile. in reality, she is more progressive even than her husband or any other democratic platform. the fact that millennials, based on free tuition and based on the global warming issue alone, are not rushing out and studying, and i think it's a pure

perception thing. it's not your mother, it's your father's candidate. i think this is a step in the right direction, because all millennials are about getting back, world community, so i think you're going to see a big push. >> did your dad have an oldsmobile? >> a buick. >> i liked my dad's oldsmobile, that's why that campaign didn't work for me. the millennial thing is a challenge for her, we've talked about it a lot on this show. i think things like this, tying to it some kind of themes and aspirations and putting her policies together in support of a narrative is all good. but the biggest problem she has with that group of voters is going to be, this is still talking about government in a way that feels like old hat, status quo. doesn't have the revolutionary kind of fervor that bernie sanders had. and i think it's going to be hard for those voters to track those kind of voters who are interested in that kind of message with this kind of program. >> before we go, can i say something to millennials? three words, free college tuition. what else do you need to know?

seriously, millennials! are you kidding me? >> that was donny's voice while you were looking at me. yelling -- it was off-camera, but he decided to take over the show. anyway, coming up, we'll talk to a donald trump surrogate when we come back. ♪ using 60,000 points from my chase ink card i bought all the framework... wire... and plants needed to give my shop... a face... no one will forget. see what the power of points can do for your business. learn more at chase.com/ink a farmer's market.ve what's in this kiester. see what the power of points can do for your business. a fire truck. even a marching band. and if i can get comfortable talking about this kiester, then you can get comfortable using preparation h. for any sort of discomfort in yours. preparation h. get comfortable with it.

whfight back fastts, with tums smoothies. it starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue. and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. ♪ tum -tum -tum -tum smoothies! only from tums joining us now is a donald trump supporter and the former lieutenant governor of new york state, that would be betsy mccoy. great to see you. we were just talking about alicia machado. i want to ask you as a trump

supporter and a woman -- >> i've been a woman all my life. >> in what universe do you think it's helpful for donald trump to do what he did this morning and decide to attack -- >> i understand why his feelings were hurt about this controversy. it feels like an ambush to me. the fact is, we know donald trump has a campaign manager, who's a married woman with four little kids. he's offered enormous opportunities to women who work for him. and this just looks like a kind of dirty trick a dirty campaign trick. >> he called her miss piggy. he fat shamed her. >> that wasn't confirmed. >> then he attacked -- >> don't say he called her "miss piggy." >> then he called her overweight. >> let me correct it for the record. there's no evidence he called her "miss piggy." >> then he attacked her ton tuesday morning and then again today. just try to answer my question, what political purpose do you think it serves for him to go and attack her again. >> i think he's trying to set the record straight about what actually happened back then,

which is for a less relevant about what's happening now. but let me just say in one sentence what happened then, as far as i can see, which is that she was that beauty contestant, something miss clinton sticks her nose up, it's not politically correct anymore, but back then, it was. and she signed a contract that she would weigh a certain amount, kind of like a jockey riding on a horse, in horse races, has to weigh a certain amount, or a male model who has to fit into a suit of a certain size. >> john, you know that -- >> you guys look pretty good, actually. very good, in fact. but when she no longer fit that description, some people wanted to fire her and he said no, give her another chance, let her work out, let her try to regain the job qualifications. that's -- that's as far as i know about miss machado. and i have no intention of attacking her, because like all women, i've battled the bulge, my children have, have had many bullets with weight. i have two granddaughters now. so i am a household of lots of

women and we all get it. >> betsy, first of all, the last thing you said is an outright lie, that she was going to be fired and he saved her. they've talked to people who were at the organization at that time -- >> i can't address it. all i've heard is what i've been told, and it's a he said/she said thing from 20 years ago. >> but i want to go back to the last thing you said, because i've seen you around town, and you are a mom -- >> and a grand mom now. >> i have three daughters and two granddaughters. >> you used the words -- i -- this is a man who's running for president of the united states and this is a latino woman who's an every person. and he called her disgusting. >> i never heard that. >> no, he tweeted it. we started the show with it. he referred to her as disgusting. >> who -- because of the attack, you mean? >> all she said was that everything that's reported to be true. she didn't say he was a horrible man, she said, i felt terrible because he fat shamed me. >> there's a lot of knife fighting going on. >> but have you ever used -- i've never called another human being disgusting -- >> i don't know if you have or not. >> that's not a word i tornado

watch to humans. >> let's put this in context. >> that's the context. >> we all define context differently. i think all the viewers, all the voters have a right to know really what's going on. and we were talking just before the show about where this accusation fit in the debate, that we're all still reprocessing and assessing. and i was very disappointed in the debate. not just because of the issue of miss machado being raised, although i don't like to see women used that way, but also because the purpose of a debate is to inform voters, right? to shed light on things. and that debate didn't do that at all. there were no follow up questions. i'll give you an example. mrs. clinton goes around the country and at the debate said she's going to make corporations pay their fair share. so why didn't the moderator say, well, what is the fair share, mrs. -- just a moment, let me finish. why -- why didn't the moderator say, well, mrs. clinton, what is

the fair share? operations in the u.s. already pay the highest rates in the world. you're proposing hiking corporate tax rates and the federal reserve has already warned us that if they are raised, it will cause, quote, a substantial decline in wages and growth. so please explain that. >> so betsy, i think that's a -- lester holt seem to have had taken the approach that the two candidates were able the to engage with each other on this question. >> well, he didn't do that. he did a lot of nasty fact checking on silly things with donald trump. >> donald trump could have raised that question if he wanted to. but what do you think about what happened in the debate. you're comfortable with the idea of having a person in the white house who is up at 3:00 in the morning tweeting things about their political opponents -- >> well, tweet -- >> just let me ask the question. under any circumstance, alleging that there's a sex tape that was involved, that does not exist, that nobody's been able to find. >> i don't know if it exists or not. >> that news organizations have spent the week looking for and can't find. temperamentally speaking, you're

comfortable with that kind of person in the office. >> yes. >> you think that would be a key behavior for a person in the president. >> don't bully me. >> i'm not bullying you. i would like you to answer the question. >> i know the answer you would like me to give you. i think donald trump has a lot to offer this country and i think mrs. clinton is trying to change the debate, from a debate over the economy. she doesn't want to own that, because people are earning less than they did in 2007. she doesn't want to talk about foreign policy, because isis is threatening so many parts of the world, and she left the state department in shambles. so what are we left with? she wants to redefine this debate -- >> i'm sorry, that's -- we have a -- we have a hard -- we have a hard break right now. appreciate that point. not really on the point of whether donald trump has a temperament to be president. but thank you for come can go back. >> that's your question. >> we'll ask a pair of strategists about donald trump's weekend and more after this. ♪

♪ ♪ geico motorcycle, great rates for great rides. get between you and life's dobeautiful moments.llergens flonase gives you more complete allergy relief. most allergy pills only control one inflammatory substance. flonase controls 6. and six is greater than one. flonase changes everything. ♪ wopen up a lot of dawn. tough on grease...yet gentle. dawn helps open... something even bigger. go to facebook.com, dawn saves wildlife. 80% try to eat healthy, yet up to 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let's do more. add one a day men's gummies. complete with key nutrients plus b vitamins to help convert food into fuel.

one a day.

bawelcome back. we're joined by liz smith, who's

worked as martin o'malley's campaign director and in washington, d.c., tim miller, an ardent never-trump republican and former communications director for jeb bush's presidential campaign. first, liz, who is your favorite world leader? >> merkel. i love her -- >> it's the party line. >> like, i look merkel, i like trudeau -- you know, trudeau, because, you know, i'm a woman and he gets extra points for how good looking he is. >> give me may, she's a conservative woman. i'll go with may. >> you got it, tim. >> liz, let's wind back the clock four days ago, and after the machado moment, what would you walk into his bedroom after his first reaction, what was the way to handle that at that point? just make it just nothing? >> did you just actually ask liz smith to imagine walking into donald trump's bedroom? >> i assume that's what happens after -- he's eating his frosty-os and they call come in in the morning and tell him what's going on. >> i just want to make this

clear. i am never walking into that man's bedroom -- >> me neither. can we take a vote on that? you too, john? >> same. >> if i were in the war room or if i were in the boardroom, what would i have told him to do? i would have said, look, i made some comments they regret 20 years ago. they do not reflect who i am as a person. they do not reflect what i'm fighting for in this campaign. i would have told him to not to do -- to do the exact opposite of what he did. and the thing about it is this. his initial comments were very bad, very offensive, but his response have been even worse. and it plays into his biggest weakness, this view that voters have, that he is temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief. >> tim, so there was a period of time you were part of the never-trump movement, and up until this debate, there was a definite consolidation happening in the republican party. a lot of people who had been never-trump or had been uncomfortable with trump were saying, we're not comfortable with him, but we don't want hillary clinton. he was starting to get close to

90% of republican votes. what do you see happening on the basis of the debate and the fallout of the debate to the republican level of support for donald trump? >> among elite republicans in washington, you know, i hope we've seen the last of people getting onboard who weren't onboard before with senator cruz. among regular rank and file republicans, i fear that -- i thought that after the debate night, that he hadn't lost any of them. i thought that they hadn't had a good night, but it wasn't so bad that he'd lost some of them. i think his behavior since the debate, if we were looking at the college-educated suburban women, this is the group that we had the most success with in the never-trump ad campaign during the primary. i bet you peel off some of them, because of his just grotesque behavior over the past few days. >> and you know, we've also seen motivation. like, we've seen searches for how to register to vote surge in latino-heavy areas. so that's been a positive side

effect for democrats, as well. >> what would you worry about right now? the thing about the clintons, always, having watched them for a long time in politics, everything's always a cycle with them. when things are going great, it goes great for a while and something happens that turns things around. they go off-course. what should you be worrieied abt right now? >> i would be worried that you let the side show get in the way of preventing a more positive, affirmative message. today, she announced a very bold national service plan and you barely read about it, because everyone's talking about donald trump's tweets. and what we've seen is that she really needs to motivate millennials. she needs to motivate latino voters and black voters. and to do that, she can't just run as not donald trump. she needs to offer up some big, bold ideas. the thing i would worry about is that they get back into this cycle of just attacking donald trump. >> and that they get complacent. >> complacency, too. i think they go hand in hand.

>> tim, there's a moment in time you feel the train leaving the tracks. to me this week has felt that way. the tooth paste is out of the tube and it's going to be very difficult for trurp to put it back in the tube. do you agree with that thesis? >> i do. honestly, i thought the train had left the tracks after the convention. i think the last time i was on your show was around then and i said that. it wasn't trump had a zero percent chance to win at that time, but it was very bleak. and i think basically he needed to run a very good campaign up until then. he needed to consolidate the republican base, juice turnout among independents who hadn't been voting in the past, and keep hillary's turnout down. and i think that, as liz said, you know, the only big question mark right now is, do the millennials, do african-americans, do hispanics turnout in the that they did for obama? anif they do, there's literally no mathematical path for trump to be the nominee. so, you know, i think that's the big challenge for the clinton campaign and trump this week, i

think, has receded a lot of the ground that he gained between the conventions in the first debate. >> tim, i'm going to stick with you about this question. apart from being defiantly against your party's nominee, you're otherwise a good republican, staunch conservative. >> true. tell me what you think, what's your assessment right now of republican prospects to hold on to the senate. >> you know, it would be interesting to see what polls look like this week. what we were seeing is during trump's lowest ad following the khan controversy that some republican senators in their internal numbers were really hemorrhaging support and it was going to be a big problem. as trump started to narrow, i thought the odds, as of last week, i think had the election been last week, republicans keep the senate. right now i think it's a close toss-up. the battlegrounds are essentially nevada, new hampshire, north carolina, pennsylvania, and missouri and, you know, we need to take three of those. so i think that it's probably a toss-up, maybe a slight lean to the democrats, but i've got a

lot of faith and the good campaigns that are being run by senate republicans right now. >> what say you to that, down-ballot? >> look, it's challenging. and this is why. you know, one way that i think trump has kind of hurt democrats down ballot is we've seen all the outside money, all the outside groups being poured into senate races. in ohio alone, ted strickland has had twice as much money spent against him in negative advertising than hillary clinton has nationally. and we're seeing the koch brothers go state to state to state, destroying or trying to destroy democratic candidates systemically. we've seen it with -- >> the evil koch brothers. >> yeah, well -- >> i don't think the evil koch brothers are going to be a problem. >> and we're seeing it in indiana right now with evan bayh. and they think they've dispatched strickland in ohio. i don't necessarily think they did. and they're now going to indiana to do that and turning out. it's going to be challenging. i'm optimistic, though. >> lis smith, tim miller, you're

both great. >> thank you, y'all. let's do this again when me and lis can argue. >> i didn't do anything to make tim feel really uncomfortable in this segment, i feel bad about that. but we'll get him next time. >> me too. coming up, lather, reince, repeat. our interview with reince priebus is next. and you can listen to us on the radio, 99.1 bloomberg f.m. well be right back. ugh. heartburn. sorry ma'am. no burning here. try new alka-seltzer heartburn relief gummies. they don't taste chalky and work fast. mmmm. incredible. can i try? she doesn't have heartburn.

new alka-seltzer heartburn relief gummies. enjoy the relief.

fixodent plus adhesives. there's a denture adhesive that holds strong until evening. just one application gives you superior hold even at the end of the day fixodent. strong more like natural teeth. on a perfect car, then smash it into a tree. your insurance company raises your rates... maybe you should've done more research on them. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise your rates due to your first accident. liberty mutual insurance. the final days of this presidential race, two words

could decide if the next leader of the free world and those words are ground game. so for "the circus," our showtime documentary series which airs this sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, i went to visit the republican national committee's headquarters in our nation's capital to see how the party is building its infrastructure in the major background states. >> we're here on capitol hill in washington, d.c., out in front of the republican national committee. always important in presidential election years, but it's particularly important this year, because the trump campaign is not financially close to being on par with hillary clinton's campaign. outsource all of that to the republican national committee. whether that will work or not, who knows. romney/ryan, mccain/palin, bush/cheney, reagan/bush. and now we have the wall of priebus. sir. i'm doing great, how are you?

one of the unusual things is that the trump campaign doesn't really have a ground game. it has basically outsourced it to you. and to your field operations if you go state by state. >> well, we've been doing this operation in a serious way after we lost in 2012 and realized that you couldn't have a national party that showed up three months before an election. so we've been on the ground now for basically three years. and from our standpoint, we think that the hillary clinton campaign is playing catch-up to us. that this is our narrative that we own. so we take it really personally when people start commenting about, well, you know, you have 24 offices here, but why don't you have 32? we have the biggest ground operation we've ever put together. just on full-time paid staff, right over 1,100, paid on the ground. but when you add in something you call the republican leadership initiative, which is a six-week trained program, where we have about 6,000 people, that are working

full-time, basically. sometimes they work harder than the paid staff. >> that's like everyone's about to quit. our team is incredible. we have over 6,000 people doing that. we've put a huge emphasis on knocking on doors. one thing we learned in 2012 is that we were very centered around phone calls. and the phones, the hit rate's not great. we were much better face to face, so we're breaking records and we feel really good about where we're at. >> what is it that makes you think your ground game is superior to the clinton ground game that's built on top of the clinton operation? >> i don't think they have the bleedthrough, through the obama operation that hillary -- one thing that obama did that we tried to replicate is that everyone argues about one good example, everyone's arguing about offices. well, they have 380 and you have 320. but what obama's operations showed us is that the offices are not where the action is. hanging out in the office making phone calls. but they were meeting at starbucks at every morning at 8:30 with their neighborhood

group. finding people in the neighborhood that are willing to work for you, that will live there, work there, with influence there. they wrote the standard there and that's what we're trying to replicate. we think we're bigger, we know we're bigger on the ground. we've been doing it for longer than they have. >> just talk about how much you guys are meshed with the trump campaign now and how well all the coordination is working? >> yeah, well, as we sit here, our com's director is up in trump tower. my chief of staff is up in trump tower. she's been gone all this week. it is one operation at this point. and you know, the rnc and the trump operation are working hand in glove and, you know, it is true. i mean, twe do carry the load when it comes to the ground operation, but it just -- it sort of just very fortunate that we took this initiative to grow at a time when we had a candidate that was a little bit thin, but it's working out. >> good morning, guys!

let's huddle up. all right, 47 days left. let's go around with division leaders. >> in florida we trained 3,000 people to knock doors this upcoming saturday. huge number. >> i was in indiana. it brings our total trainings to 470. >> over 4,000 volunteer prospects. >> trainings with hispanic surrogates. >> 210 volunteers. >> we have a table set up toot voter registration. >> 6,240 doors already this week. field team is doing very well. very proud of them. >> historically and traditionally, their ground operations are in-house. >> mr. trump's campaign, obviously, has been very different. it's relied a lot on the rallies. i'll tell you what day do have. they have an army of volunteers. one of the biggest army of volunteers i've ever seen, if not the biggest. so our challenge has been, you know, corral all the excitement and the volunteers that flock to all these rallies and train them and then activate them in the

field. like right now, this is what we've been working towards, is the turnout. >> our thanks to reince priebus and our friends at the republican national committee. "the circus" airs this sunday on showtime at 8:00 p.m. eastern. we will talk about how much ground games really matter this year after these words from our sponsors. the microsoft cloud helps us stay connected. the microsoft cloud offers infinite scalability. the microsoft cloud helps our customers get up and running, anywhere in the planet. wherever there's a phone, you've got a bank, and we could never do that before. the cloud gave us a single platform to reach across our entire organization. it helps us communicate better. we use the microsoft cloud's advanced analytics tools to track down cybercriminals. this cloud helps transform business. this is the microsoft cloud. wopen up a lot of dawn. tough on grease...yet gentle. dawn helps open... something even bigger.

go to facebook.com, dawn saves wildlife.

the polls that happened that night, the night of the debate, the snap polls, the ones that happened online, those all showed mr. trump winning. >> what scientific poll had donald trump winning? give me one scientific poll. those are fan polls, man. >> those are a snapshot of what people are thinking that are actually watching the debate. >> jason, you've been doing this for a while, you know those are bogus. >> i'll take the seven plus polls that all show mr. trump winning big time. >> he says you can't be a ten if you're flat chested.

he hasn't said the equivalent of a man. >> i think everyone has their own opinion on what a ten is. >> he said, i came prepared to say some rough stuff, but i won't do it because your family's here and your daughter's here, but it's not nice you're running hundreds of millions of dollars in ads against me. and he has a point. >> kellyanne, come on. it's not nice? they're running for president. of course she's going to hit him with negative ads. >> but the ads should be true. >> the jazzed she's running about him when it comes to his comments on women use his words, kellyan kellyanne. >> those are some trump surrogates tangling with journalists on live tv. we're joined now by two of d.c.'s finest. national editor for the national review and national political correspondent for national post, phil rutger. we got to see some greatest hits. i want to shift to what we teased out of the last segment on the ground game. excuse me, this is for illeana. let me shift to you.

>> i'm ready. >> i know you're working on a piece on the ground game. i remember hearing david plouffe say that 2012, they knew where every single vote was. is it fair to say to republicans are a tremendous deficit, despite the fact of what reince priebus was saying? >> absolutely. and you know, credit goes to the rnc that's had to fill in a huge vacuum, where the trump campaign, doing the work that the trump campaign should be doing. so they've come in and they're doing a lot of hard work. but you know, take florida, where they're operating at about a fifth the capacity to have the clinton campaign. they've got about 80 people down there. clinton campaign has about 500. but look, trump is about one point behind in the latest polls of florida. and i think it really leads to -- it leads to the question, how much does ground game actually matter? because trump is running, he's really not getting crushed. and i think the conclusion that one could draw is that, you know, ground game is about harvesting supporters that

already exist. it's not about finding new supporters who are out there. and trump has a lot of supporters, but the conclusion is he's not really building new -- he's not, you know, creating new supporters in the campaigning that he's doing. that's what the rest of the campaign is about. andic at the end of the day, that's going to be trump's problem. >> phil, i want to ask you about a question -- a question i sort of asked tim miller a little while ago on this show. that coming into this debate, the polls were tightening and republicans were consolidating around trump. given his debate performance and more pointedly, his performance since the debate, what are you hearing and seeing from republicans about donald trump? >> yeah, so i've actually spent the day with my colleague, talking to a lot of republican strategists and operatives and lawmakers and other party officials, and there's a great deal of concern. there's sort of mounting anxiety that trump is kind of letting it go. that it wasn't just a rocky debate performance monday, but it's a week, now, where he's

been attacking this latina beauty queen and he's had sort of erratic behavior, including the tweets overnight. and a sense that he's not focused and disciplined and can't concentrate on what a lot of republicans see as the most effective message for him, which is that he's a change agent and that hillary clinton has bad judgment. we're not hearing that. we're hearing his attacks about the beauty queen, for example. and so there's a real desire for him to change urgently, and it's important, because there aren't 40 days left until people start voting. they're already voting in iowa, for example. and other states are going to start early voting here soon. the time is really precious. >> eliana, sort of the same question to you. back, right after the democratic convention, when trump went after the khan family, i would say the republican freakout was kind of at a godzilla level, on a scale of one to godzilla, and it kind of subsided in the last month, partly because the polls tightened, as i said. what level do you feel -- on a scale of one to godzilla, what's the level of republican freakout on friday evening?

>> i think it's at about, you know, 60% of the khan level, because this miss universe contestant isn't sort of the unimpeachable sort of citizen that the khans were. but i think it really does -- this really does show that trump is exhibiting the sort of political instinct. he's the only candidate who could turn a losing 90-minute debate performance into a four-day-long national event. and that's what's really corresponding here. i don't think it's his attacks on this miss universe contestant who's not a model citizen, but it's the horrible political instincts he's been displaying. and it's -- i think it's unlikely that he'll have better instincts on display in the next two debate performances, which is really the concern. >> phil, in talking to other republican operatives, clearly, i think the two best moments for trump and the two big talking points are, hillary, you've been doing this for 30 years, and of course, trade, trade, trade. it's a simple one-two punch.

is that the consensus within the republican folks your talking to? >> it is, but there are other things that he could be doing, too. there's a sense that there were a lot of missed opportunities in that first debate. he never really went after her on the clinton foundation, for example. the comments about the e-mail -- >> i just want to interrupt for a second. wouldn't bit tough right now, given, particularly, the latest events now, in terms of with cuba and all of his foundation things, isn't that kind of a weak punch at this point to be focusing on her foundation? >> oh, certainly. but a lot of republicans want to see him sort of doing everything he can to make that case against hillary clinton. not getting distracted by these told grudges, these sort of personal issues, counter-punching every time he gets hit by something coming in from the side. and they just want to see their nominee focused and executing every day. and he's failing to do that right now. >> eliana, wouldn't you think -- you mentioned the fact that this behavior, it has kind of, if you look forward to the next debate, it makes you wonder about whether trump is going to be able to pull it together.

everyone in his world thinks he must do better in the second debate, and that will require a sort of work and focus and discipline. just seeing this behavior, particularly the behavior of the 3:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. tweet s what conclusions would one mean if one worked in the trump campaign about what that means for the next two weeks for trump? >> i think the real concern is that he could be the best-prepared candidate or the best-prepared person in the world, but he walks on that debate stage. and if he's baited, all that preparation goes out the window. and i think he did walk on the debate stage, you know, he was moderately prepared. he did get out a couple of effective answers. he arguably won the first 20 minutes, but he cannot resist taking the bait. he's incredibly thin skinned and he gets into, you know, he follows every rabbit down the hole. that's a real concern, his lack of self-discipline. >> we'll be watching the rabbits and the holes a week from sunday. thank you, eliana johnson and phil rutger, you are both great and we will be right back. using 60,000 points

from my chase ink card i bought all the fruit... veggies... and herbs needed to create a pop-up pick-your-own juice bar in the middle of the city, so now everyone knows... we have some of the freshest juice in town. see what the power of points can do for your business. learn more at chase.com/ink this clean was like - pow.ything well? see what the power of points can do for your business. it felt like i had just gone to the dentist. it just kind of like, wiped everything clean. my teeth are glowing. they look great. they are so white. crest hd 6x cleaning. 6x whitening. and at two weeks, superior sensitivity relief to the leading sensitivity toothpaste. i actually really like the two steps! crest hd step 1 cleans, step 2 whitens.

it's the whole package. no one's done this. crest - healthy, beautiful smiles for life.

whfight back fastts, with tums smoothies. it starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue. and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. ♪ tum -tum -tum -tum smoothies! only from tums

head to bloombergpolitics.com right now for a look at where congress is kind of regretting that saudi bill override. for donny and i, have a great weekend and sayonara. >> "hardball" with chris matthews is next. the tweet where you live. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. so why did donald trump, busy as he is running for president, allow a former beauty contestant to live rent-free in his brain the last five days? why doesn't he evict her from his mind and get back to the issues? uncontrolled immigration, bad job-killing trade deals, and stupid wars. those are issues that he could win the white house, instead of tweeting about her at 3:00 in the morning. how could he ever perform as president when he can't focus his mind on