2,000 people live there in southern rural north carolina, it's due south of fayetteville. every year in bladenboro, they host something called the bladenboro beast fest. i don't actually know why it's called the beast fest, but i do know that they have an awesome car show at the beast fest every year. really cool international scout there, the white sort of broncoey looking thing. a beautiful old ford mustang, beautiful new ford mustang there. i think this pickup here, i think this is a ford step side lowered pickup. forgive me if that's a chevy. i think that is a ford. the car show's organized by the southeastern cruisers. they do a really good car show every year at the bladenboro beast fest. and part of the reason it's called is the trophies are huge. they give out 50 trophies. each is the size of a sixth grader.

but the beast fest is the annual local thing in bladenboro and always has this really good car show for such a small town. but one thing that every small town in america gets to know pretty quickly is if you hold your annual town get-together, whatever it is, whether it's your car show or your barbecue or your fall fest or whatever, if the thing your town does is a thing that happens in late october or early november, every few years you run the risk at your little town get-together that some of the people who are going to show up are going to be candidates for political office. people who are running for things, right? end of october, beginning of november. there's going to be politicians there any time there's any gathering of any size. and at the bladenboro north carolina beast fest this weekend, indeed they had that affliction. two competing candidates for the local seat in the state

legislature both attended the car show, both attended the beast fest at the same time. the democratic candidate was there with his grandson in the stroller walking around the beast fest. the republican candidate was there with his wife and some of his supporter. there were reports that there had been an early voting location nearby. there were tempers raised by that because of jockeying around voters entering the early voting site. i don't know exactly. we've seen some references to the early voting site nearby. i don't know how things escalated between those two candidates for state legislature at the bladenboro beast fest this weekend, nor do i know how close their physical escalation was to the stroller with the baby in it. but whatever happened between these two guys at this car show, it did apparently devolve into a fistfight. >> during election season, we all know things can get pretty heated, but over the weekend one race got physical at a family festival. >> it involved two candidates for state house district 46 which covers bladen, columbus

and robinson counties. >> i put my hands in my pocket, told him i did not want to fight him. he kept insisting that we have a fistfight. when i turned to walk away, he sucker punched me. >> benton released a statement saying in part, i will say that i do not advocate violation but i will not be bullied by the republican party. i stand up for myself just the same as i will stand up for you, the people i'll represent in house district 46. >> this was rural north carolina this weekend. the local democratic party chairman later released this statement to the local paper saying that what actually started this fistfight was the republican candidate, quote, leaning in close to the democrat as they were arguing and saying into his ear, quote, i'm going to break it off in your -- word that means donkey in another context. i'm going to break it off in your -- the cops were reportedly called. the cops say they did not

actually see the fight. but both of those candidates have now sworn out warrants for each other after this fight at the beast fest. i think what that means is that both of them are now due to be arrested if they haven't been already. so that's nice. every state in the country has contested state legislature seats, state senate seats. north carolina is one of the few states this year that in addition to all the normal election stuff they've got going on. they're seen as an incredibly hard fought battleground, and in this u.s. senate race this year. they may be the most incredibly fought battle in the country in terms of the presidential race this year. north carolina is a little bit of a special case. with one week left before election day now, if there is a state in the country where the strain is likely to show, i'm going to guess it is probably north carolina. i mean, florida and ohio are getting their share of attention like they do every four years,

but florida and ohio are sort of used to getting that attention every four years. north carolina is not necessarily used to the red hot national spotlight, the incredible pressure they've got not just in the presidential race but down the ballot on all these very close nationally important races that they are having right now. now, if you have watched this show for a while, you may also remember something a little special about north carolina politics. you may also remember that north carolina is home to something called the voter integrity project. that's a group that was founded in the tea party era. we've been covering them as a national news story ever since the 2012 presidential campaign because in the 2012 presidential campaign, the voter integrity project in north carolina famously claimed that they had identified 30,000 dead people who were registered to vote in north carolina. they got a ton of great press for that in the state and nationwide. it was the scandal, this lural scandal about zombie voters and the voter integrity project, they basked in the attention they got. 30,000 dead people swamping the

rolls in this state. that story did get awkward when these supposedly dead people in north carolina started turning up, raising their hands, talking to the press, making a pretty convincing case that they were, in fact, not dead. they were alive. we hosted an elections official in north carolina at the time who confessed to us how many man-hours, how much work, how many resources the state was having to put in to chasing down these supposedly 30,000 dead people on the rolls after they got so much press. ultimately they were not able to find a single instance of voter fraud despite all those headlines. they weren't able to find any real dead people really voting. it was kind of a funny story, right? funny to have all these people whose names were on the dead list coming forward very much alive and saying, i hereby attest, i am not dead. but it was important. in 2008 the presidential race was decided by a measly 14,000

votes. this group trying to cut 30,000 people off the rolls, 30,000 live voters off the rolls by claiming they were dead, it was funny, but politically it was a pretty big deal. well, this year the pressure on north carolina is even hotter than it was in 2008 and 2012. and turns out that voter integrity project is still around. they haven't gotten any less creepy over the years. after we reported in them in that presidential race in 2012, the voter integrity project responded by hounding one of the young producers of this show personally and threatening her that she needed to get right with god, sort of an implied or else. none of us took kindly to that. in this year's election, though, here's what the north carolina voter integrity project looks likes now. now, i'm going to show you this from their website. if you are watching with your kids, i'll tell you this is offensive. so you might want to take a second to clap a hand over your

child's eyes or hit pause for a second. their feature story at their website, headlines, "raping the retard vote." this is north carolina's voter integrity project. they later changed that headline to "reaping vulnerable voters." still the same story, though. why the photo of kim kardashian, i don't know. but in this hot, hot moment in the bright, bright spotlight for north carolina their voter integrity project is still classy as ever and they're once again making national news. this time it's because of one of their volunteers who also happens to be the secretary of the moore county north carolina republican party. she alone has reportedly persuaded the local board of elections in her county to throw more than 400 other people off the rolls just in time for the election this year.

this time the voter integrity project, they're volunteers. they're not claiming that live voters are dead. this time they used a mailer from the voter integrity project from the raping the retard vote people, they used a mailer from them as the basis for challenging hundreds of legitimately registered voters in moore county, north carolina. they're claiming that the way they sent out these mailers they all must be struck off the rolls and the local board of election said okay. naacp lawsuit filed today says this trick with the mailer was actually used to strike thousands of people off the rolls in multiple counties in north carolina just over the last couple of weeks. even though federal law, the national voting registration act says you can't do that. you can't do anything to systematically purge names off the voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. this is obviously a matter of some urgency. the naacp is now asking for

expedited action from a federal court to stop these activists from throwing voters off the rolls, to reinstate voters who probably don't even know they've been thrown off the rolls by this technique and won't know until they show up on election day and all of a sudden can't vote. the voter integrity project and actist haves who have been organizing these purges, these hundreds of thousands of challenges to north carolina in the last couple of weeks, they're still making the case that there's nothing illegal about what they're doing because there's nothing systematic about it. they're just individual citizens who happen to know several hundred or maybe several thousand of their fellow north carolina residents should really ought to be banned from voting. they're just trying to clean up the voter rolls. nothing systemic about it. if there is strain in the system, if there's a potential for abuse or intimidation in the system, the pressure on north carolina right now makes that state a good candidate to watch in terms of where the strain is likely to show.

early voting in north carolina is producing numbers that make it look like a dead tie so far in that state. the polling in north carolina makes it look like a dead tie in that state. the numbers couldn't be closer. the republican senator of north carolina is richard burr. he's an incumbent fighting for his political life. the last nbc poll in north carolina had that senate race literally in a tie. the real clear politics polling average for that senate race right now has richard burr up but by less than a point. remember how i said the strain is starting to show in that state? well, it's important to note that the election really has already started in north carolina. they're in their second week of early voting. election day itself only a week from today like it is everywhere. but today the largest newspaper in the state of north carolina reported that their senator, richard burr, is refusing to release information to them, to the newspaper about any of senator burr's campaign

appearances. he will no longer tell the "raleigh news and observer" what he's doing to campaign or where he might make a public appearance. he's keeping it secret from the newspaper. i mean, huh? it was weird this year when republican presidential candidate donald trump had his media blacklist with all these national news outlets, whose reporters he would not let into his events. that's weird enough at the presidential level. but in the senate race senator richard burr is taking that a step further. he's not letting the "news and observer" know about his events and appearances so that maybe they can't cover them, he imagines? i mean, at this late date in the election in north carolina, how can the effort of trying to exclude that one newspaper from knowing about where you are, how can that possibly be worth it? senator burr, they're going to figure out where you are.

i mean, they're reporters, not that big a state. you're like booking rooms and talks to crowds and stuff. other reporters still know where you are. they will find you. you are sure it's a good use of your time to try to keep your whole campaign secret from the state's largest paper? got anything better to do in this last week? the strain is showing. and north carolina, of course, is not the only place where it's tight. overall in terms of senate control. in swing states all across the country, by our count today polls put six different senate races within margins of three points or less. how is that for down to the wire? right now fivethirtyeight.com and "the new york times" both still project that democrats are favored to take control of the senate but that probability in both cases is small and shrinking.

67% at fivethirtyeight, 59% at "the new york times." you can see the way campaigns are using resources right now. clinton has more cash on hand than trump does. her campaign is spending that cash, shoring up her defenses in blue states or purple states that the campaign previously appeared to consider safe. the clinton campaign is up with ads in wisconsin, virginia, colorado, new mexico, michigan. the trump campaign is also moving into some new territory. two of those states are also places where clinton is right now. both the clinton campaign and the trump campaign have ramped up in michigan and new mexico. those were not the battlegrounds, those are not states trump was focusing on before. but if you are serving this landscape right now and you are looking for signs of strain, i have to tell you there was also one very acutely weird element of what the trump campaign is doing right now, which is it's new today.

it is a very strange thing they're doing as they're shifting resources and strategy in this final week. i think the strain is showing here more acutely than anything else we're seeing. and that really weird story is next.

just before 8:00 a.m. eastern time today donald trump's main social media guy tweeted out this. it was aimed at pennsylvania voters. you see the tweet there. we hear you pennsylvania. you can change your early vote by calling this number. then you see the visual there. pennsylvania, regret voting for hillary? want to change your vote? just call this toll-free number. it's kind of amazing, right? have you ever seen anything like this in any election let alone a presidential election? you can change your vote just by calling this phone number? you can change your vote by calling this phone number. really?

no. you have never actually seen anything like that before because, no, you cannot change your vote by calling that phone number. you cannot do that. this is such a weird thing to be happening at any point let alone in the last week of the campaign. i mean, that phone number, if you call it, it goes to the pennsylvania state elections office. but no way, no how can you change your early vote. you can't early vote in pennsylvania at all. you can absentee vote if you arrange it in advance and you attest to having an excuse as to why you can't vote on election day and if you do that and you can actually vote on election day after awe, you do have the opportunity to show up and sign papers telling state to go find your old mailed-in absentee excuse ballot, one you sent in a few weeks ago, and if they find that, they can void that and instead you can vote in person that day on election day. so maybe that's what the trump campaign means. but look at what they sent out.

that is not what the trump campaign is walking people through here. can we show that again? put it back up there. there we go. do you want to change your vote? call this number. that is not what the trump campaign is walking people through there. i mean, after starting off the day with this just before 8:00 a.m. today, the trump campaign did eventually delete that tweet. they went back to the subject and they're apparently trying to get people in multiple states to see if they can unvote their already cast early votes. i mean, just for perspective here, this is the last week of the presidential pain. candidates all the way from fistfighting local car shows, state legislature wannabes, those guys all the way up to presidential elections, are trying really hard to get people to vote who otherwise might not vote. but the trump campaign is trying to get people who have already voted to individually convince

election officials that they should be allowed to recast their early vote and vote a second time because maybe they'll vote differently the second time than they did the first time if they can get their vote that they already cast rescinded. that's the plan. knock yourself out. knock yourself out. this is -- trump campaign is trying to do this in four states now. this is their effort. this is a wild time right now in american politics. not just in terms of the closeness of the polls but the closeness of the polls is driving up the stakes for anybody who is in a hotly contested race or anybody who cares about the outcome of a hotly contested race anywhere in the country. in the modern era we've also never before had the fbi insert itself as a factor in presidential race. as they stands by to hint darkly about something unexplained involving hillary clinton while

simultaneously today what appear to be anonymous fbi sources leaked to "the new york times" that americans should see nothing to worry about in any of the investigations you might have heard about concerning donald trump. so the fbi is playing this remarkable role in this election, making vague statements about one candidate while leaking exculpatory information about the other candidate. a week out from the election. this is something we've never seen before from the fbi. we also in the modern era have never seen a popular sitting president of the united states campaigning his heart out for his would-be successor. that did not happen with george w. bush or bill clinton or ronald reagan or our modern two-term presidents. but that is happening right now and boy, howdy, it is, with president barack obama. how is that going to affect things heading into election day? tonight we've got former massachusetts governor, libertarian vice presidential nominee bill weld, who is here

for the interview. i'm very happy about that. he's in a very interesting position right now. i'm also happy to say our next guest is tom brokaw. if there's a man you would like to get some calming wisdom in a wild world like this, that man is tom brokaw. he joins us here next.

today president obama had a message for columbus, ohio, that was inspiring and energizing about this election. it was also, i have to tell you,

mostly about taco bell. >> because i've been watching the world series, i am aware that because francisco lindor stole second base in game one, everyone gets a free taco at taco bell tomorrow. i mean, this guy was so fired up about the free taco, look at him. i have never seen anybody so excited about a free taco. this guy right here. there is a reason -- the reason i'm bringing this up, if you can find the time to get a free taco, then you can find the time to go vote. here in ohio, you can vote right now. you can vote right now.

you can vote and then go get your taco. it's like a combo meal. it's like you get something good for your soul and then you get something good for your appetite. >> president obama's taco bell friendly pitch to get out the early vote in ohio. cast your ballot, get some free taco bell. not the most serious moment on the campaign trail but also a good reminder that politics really is just one thing that is going on in most people's lives, even if politics do feel a little bigger than usual right about now. joining us now is the great tom brokaw, longtime anchor of "nbc nightly news." now nbc news special correspondent. thanks for being here. >> always a pleasure. >> amid all the normal election craziness, free tacos and all, is this normal?

is it always this frenetic? does it always feel so wild at this point? >> it's often frenetic. you'll remember that george bush and john kerry had a crazy last week. in fact, john kerry was closing fast and then on the friday night before the election, osama bin laden issued a jihad against the united states and a lot of people pulled back, thought thursday is what we've got, also at the very end john kerry felt very strongly he didn't do as well in ohio as he deserved to because of the placement of ballot boxes and everything, but it's never gotten this crazy before. you also have to remember that kennedy and nixon 100,000 votes separated them. it got me into this business. 8:00 i sat down in any parents' home. the next morning, that's whether i want to be, that's what i want to do with my life. by then i was already a political junkie.

but it really lifted me because it got people engaged. but nothing, nothing like this. >> one of the things that on that sort of timeline, i've been thinking about 1992 when the friday before the election george h.b. bush, looking back at the election says one of the reasons he thought he lost in 1992 was the special prosecutor from iran/contra coming out and levying an indictment against cap weinberg, the defense secretary. that's an indictment that was later dropped in december after the election. george h.b. bush blamed that announcement from federal law enforcement essentially for having tilted things against him at the very last minute. we're seeing some shades of that kind of thing, too, with this fbi. >> i don't want to challenge his integrity because i have the highest regard for the president, but at the same time he was also facing ross perot. the ross perot factor getting almost 20% of the vote. no one thought he would get that high. but he got to 19%.

that's a big dent in probably votes that would have gone to president bush. so it was probably a combination of the two. by the way, the special prosecutor was not at all happy about the indictment being dropped against cap weinberger. he thought that he had a solid case, went to his grave arguing that. those were chaotic times, but nothing quite like this. what this says, by the way, is what we've known from the beginning, rachel, is that the country has not been deeply in love in a mass way with either one of those candidates. they've got a very dedicated following, each of them. but once you get beyond that people are, i'm not quite so sure. >> we'll be talking with bill weld later on this hour, the libertarian nominee. he's had an interesting career in republican politics and then got an endorsement from ross perot when he ran for senate against john kerry once upon a time. he's had a very interesting atypical party career. because there is that antipathy toward both of those candidates, why do you think that none of the third party candidates really blew up this year?

why do you think there wasn't an independent challenge even from a mainstream party affiliated candidate who broke off that really would have blown this campaign up? >> my guess is that the phenomenal success of donald trump in the early stages probably discouraged a lot of people. they saw he was running against convention, he was dominating the screens and dominating talk radio and dominating twitter. he seemed to be an unassailable force. he made it tough for an outsider to come in and do it because of the momentum he had going in. >> let me ask you about one other -- actually, notably unprecedented thing about this election. we haven't seen in generations a popular outgoing president campaigning his guts out for his would-be successor. it's a different circumstances that explain why our last two-term presidents did it. they all had unique circumstances that explained it. what we see with president obama on the hustings for clinton is something that we haven't seen before.

how do you evaluate the impact of this president on this campaign? >> we don't know yet about the impact. my guess is that he does help her because when he goes into the kind of audiences like right there, they say if the president is for her, maybe i ought to take another look at her. but i think it's getting even with donald trump for disputing his birth certificate and also challenging everything that he has stood for. i think the two of them are very effective, michelle and the president, in getting out there and saying the things that they wanted to say, but there's a lot of personality in that as well because i think that they think that the president that donald trump is bad for the country, bad for the policies, bad for the legacy and they'd rather have hillary in there who they really are very fond of because they see that as an extension of mr. political policy. >> but it may have been different had the republican nominee been a ted cruz or a scott walker. >> i think we would have had a much different race. but at the same time you cannot deny the ability of trump to fight this guerrilla war that's

who been fighting and stay alive. a week ago it look like it was all over when we heard the tapes from "access hollywood," then boom, the e-mails have come back again. now, the clinton people claim that he cannot get to 270, that they're hanging on by their fingernails at this point but they think their get out the vote operation will get them there and then he's got to win in states where it will be tougher for him to win. i'm the ufo guy, the unforeseen will occur. this is another example of that. but i also say it's close, everybody is excited about that. the mass polls don't count. >> national polls are meaningless. >> no. you have to go state by state. people need to do that. it is a slightly different proposition. >> tom brokaw, special correspondent, always an honor to have you here. >> great to be here with you.

>> much more ahead this busy night.

to my eternal regret, we almost never get to have live republicans appear on this show. tonight we have one. sort of. jackie, please lock the door before he changes his mind. thank you.

independent candidate ross perot, as tom brokaw just mentioned, he got 19% of the vote in 1992.

then he ran again in 1996, but he didn't run as an independent in '96. he created a new political party called the reform party. a competitive third party had never seen plausible in modern politics. but here was ross perot getting a fifth of the vote the last time around. he had millions of federal financing to establish a party framework that would outlast him. he was a household name. in 1996, that second ross perot run his reform party, they didn't manage to field a whole slate of candidate. they did endorse some around the country.

but there was only one congressional candidate who got a personal in person endorsement from ross perot himself. i want to deeply thank ross perot for the honor of his endorsement. >> bill weld, republican governor of massachusetts, accepting the ross perot and reform party endorsement for the

u.s. senate race in 1996. it's kind of a raucous thing. you can hear from the reaction that not everybody in the reform party was thrilled with that decision. some cheers, some boos, even if its first year the reform party had internal rifts that bedevil every party. and bill weld was a well liked republican figure in massachusetts, but he lost to the incumbent democrat senator john kerry. and that was the story across the board for the reform party that year. ross perot himself only got 8% of the vote in 1996, down from 19% when he ran before. none of the congressional challengers the reform party endorsed that year won their races, none of them. as quickly as the reform party seemed like it was becoming a viable third party, it became not viable. four years later ross perot didn't run. the reform party got less funding because they had the poor showing in '96. there was a nasty fight over who

the reform party would run in 2000. a bunch of people threw their hats in the ring, including donald trump, but eventually it was actually pat buchanan who ended up leading the party's ticket in 2000. my old friend uncle pat, he failed to win even one half of one percent of the vote that year, in 2000. so then that was that. no more federal financing, no more reform party. even that really successful third party had a remarkably quick boom and bust cycle and they are kaput. ever since ross perot did so well in '92 for a generation now, third parties have been trying to chase what he did. they've been chasing that elusive 5% benchmark. they hit that national benchmark, they can get federal funding, make a play for being a viable third party the next time around. well, this year one of the guys that's doing that chasing is bill weld. 20 years after losing that senate race despite the reform

party, bill weld this year is the vice presidential nominee of the libertarian party running with gary johnson. the johnson/weld ticket, i don't think he'll mind me saying, honestly have no chance of winning. they didn't even get close to making the debates. what they're aiming at appears to be that 5% threshold nationwide so maybe the libertarian party can start to become a force to be reckoned with the next time around. at what cost are they willing to pursue that goal, though? one week out, the country sort of needs an answer on that. hold that thought. goals. so i liked when my doctor told me that i may reach my blood sugar and a1c goals by activating what's within me with once-weekly trulicity. trulicity is not insulin.

it helps activate my body to do what it's supposed to do release its own insulin. trulicity responds when my blood sugar rises. i take it once a week, and it works 24/7. it comes in an easy-to-use pen and i may even lose a little weight. trulicity is a once-weekly injectable prescription medicine to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. it should be used along with diet and exercise. trulicity is not recommended as the first medicine to treat diabetes and should not be used by people with severe stomach or intestinal problems or people with type i diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. trulicity is not insulin and has not been studied with long-acting insulin. do not take trulicity if you or anyone in your family has had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2 or if you are allergic to trulicity or its ingredients. stop using trulicity and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms of an allergic reaction, such as itching, rash, or difficulty breathing; if you have signs of pancreatitis such as severe stomach pain that will not go away and may move to your back, with or without vomiting or if you have symptoms of thyroid cancer,

which may include a lump or swelling in your neck, hoarseness, trouble swallowing, or shortness of breath. medicines like trulicity may cause stomach problems, which could be severe. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and any medicines you take. taking trulicity with a sulfonylurea or insulin may increase your risk for low blood sugar. common side effects include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, decreased appetite, and indigestion. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney failure. with trulicity, i click to activate what's within me. if you want help improving your a1c and blood sugar numbers with a non-insulin option, click to activate your within. ask your doctor about once-weekly trulicity. i'm very pleased to say that joining us tonight live in studio for the interview is bill weld, libertarian candidate. >> thank you so much. good to be here. thank you. >> i posited just a moment before the commercial break that what you and gary johnson are aiming at this year is that 5%

threshold to try to get federal matching funds and ballot access so that the libertarians might be viable in the future. >> in the real world that's probably correct. that would give federal matching fund, no more ballot access woes. we thought for the longest time we might have a chance to run the table because we're such nice guys and centrist party, et cetera, but not getting into the debates really sort of foreclosed that option, so now it's the 5%, you're right. >> when you talk about pursuing that 5% option, for people in states where it's really close, for people in north carolina, pennsylvania, florida, ohio, these states where the presidential race really might be decided among the two candidates who do actually have a shot at it, do you think that people in those states should vote for you? >> well, we are making our case that we're fiscally responsible and socially inclusive and welcoming and we think we've got

on the merits the best ticket of the three parties, if you will, and so, you know, we'd like to get there. having said that, as i think you're aware, i see a big difference between the r candidate and the d candidate. and i've been at some pains to say that i fear for the country if mr. trump should be elected. it's a candidacy without any parallel that i can recall. it's content free and very much given to stirring up envy and resentment and even hatred. i think it would be a threat to the conduct of our foreign policy and our position in the world at large. >> when you say fear for the country, do you -- is that hyperbole or do you mean that literally? do you think it would be a threat to us as a country? >> it would be a threat to our politics as tom brokaw has been saying the last couple of days. we're getting to the point where we're impinging on democratic institutions in this country.

it takes a certain, not a suspension of disbelief but a willingness to go along with other people to get the ship of state going forward. i'm not sure that happens in a trump presidency, frankly. >> you described him as unstable. did you mean that sort of psychologically or what's the basis of it? >> no, i mean that psychologically. i think he showed in the debates that when he encountered criticism or a challenge he behaves the way, you know, a bully would. he just doesn't take it well. he doesn't deal well with criticism and blame. i don't think he could competently manage the office of the presidency given the criticism and the challenge that you face every single day as president of the united states. he just would not be in his element and i think he would wobble off course. and i think the country just can't have that. >> given that, i'm just going to circle back to the question that

i asked before. somebody listening to you right now in north carolina knowing that north carolina may decide who the next president of the united states is. hearing you in terms of what you think about donald trump and that you fear for the country if he is elected, why wouldn't it be -- if those are the stakes, and that person is deciding, well, i'm going to vote against donald trump, and you concede that you and gary johnson aren't going to win the presidency, why would that person not weigh threat to the country, fear for the fate of the country against hope the libertarian party gets its 5% this year, why would a person pick the libertarian vote in that case if the stakes are that high between voting for clinton and trump? >> the person could very well decide not to do that, and for someone deciding not to do that, i have a lot to say about mrs. clinton that has not been said by others recently and needs to be said.

i've known her 40 years. i worked with her professionally, i know her personally. i know her to be a person of high moral character, a reliable person, and an honest person. however, so much mr. trump may rant and rave to the contrary. so i'm happy to say that. and people can make their own choices. >> i feel like you're butting up against a gossamer ceiling here. in that you're not getting -- you're not quitting. you're not stepping out of the race. i heard you say today on msnbc that you'll cast a vote for the libertarian ticket. >> that would be our ticket. >> your and gary johnson's ticket. do you honestly believe that gary johnson would be a better president than hillary clinton? >> i think he'd be capable of being a good chief executive, aleppo notwithstanding.

he's a strong governor. i believe in the platform of the libertarian party which is different than the other two party. it would be good for the country if the libertarians had a seat at the table to speak truth to the power of the other two parties in washington. i'm not taking anything i've said about the massive difference between the two establishment party candidates. one would be chaos for the country, i think, and the other would be a very businesslike and capable and competition approach to our affairs. >> what do you think -- what's your reaction? i ask this in part because you were deputy attorney general, assistant attorney general. >> criminal division. and i've been in some pains to say that i fear for the country if mr. trump should be elected. it's a candidacy without any parallel that i can recall. it's content free and very much given to stirring up envy and resentment and even hatred.

and i think it would be a threat to the conduct of our foreign policy and our position in the world at large. >> when you say fear for the country, is that hyperbole or do you mean that literally? do you think it will and threat to us as a country?

background, and you've had a varied life in public service. what is your reaction to the emergence of the fbi's sort of he's a former attorney general as well as director of the fbi. but it's not a good thing. >> when you say there's nothing there, the campaign of which you are a part, put out this statement, re clinton. and it says the newest revelations about hillary clinton demonstrate why america should be scared of both clinton and trump. parents all over have to apologize to their children for what we are giving them. it sounds like you do not agree with this statement from your own campaign. >> that is correct, that is correct. >> but they still kept it up over your photo. >> you know, in fairness, gary and i have not agreed on a number of substantive issues. we've had influence on each other. he's had influence on me in criminal justice reform issues. i talk with gary every other day. we're on different coasts, usually, but i do not agree with that.

>> as a massachusetts resident who knows something of your tenure in public life there, i'm on a different place ideologically in you, but i have a lot of respect for your career and thoughtfulness. i think that you're a deep thinker and a clear thinker on those things. i have a lot of respect for you. hope you don't mind me saying. >> let me button my coat. i sense something's coming. >> i can't imagine that you wouldn't tell a person in north carolina or ohio to vote for hillary clinton if the choice they were making was between giving the libertarian party 5% or potentially electing donald trump. the libertarian party hasn't treated you great if they're putting out statements that you

disagree with over your own name, even now, this one week before the election, i can't believe your loyalty is higher. >> i'm doing it based on my personal experience with her. i think she deserves to have people vouch for her, other than members of the democratic national committee, so i'm here to do that. >> you've had a fascinating career, and i really appreciate your time coming in and talking to me tonight. thank you. >> governor bill weld, the vice presidential nominee of the libertarian ticket. that was the most interesting political conversation i've had about this election in months. thank you, we'll be right back. a key super pac for donald

a key super pac for donald trump released three new ads against hillary clinton today. these ads are running online,

facebook, youtube, foogle. three notable things about this. first of all, they reported taking in precisely $25 in donations for the entire month of october. hmm. but the month before that, they took in a bunch of money. they took in more than $2 million, including six figures from a guy you might remember. eric prince, remember him? the founder of black water. the mercenary company that donald trump now insists he was against. four black water guards were convicted in 2014 and given huge sentences for killing 17 innocent civilians. those black water guards went directly to prison, but their boss is very rich.

and it appears he's putting some of the booty from that into electing donald trump. helping put these ads on your youtube machine. "first look" is up next. we are less than a week away from election day and the candidates are upping their attacks. donald trump is switching focus to obamacare. plus, we're learning new details about vladimir putin's plan to nationalize russia's internet, putting mika brzezinski in hmicrosoft in his sights. plus, chicago forces game seven of the world series.