my administration is removing the burdens and regulations on your companies so that you can compete, thrive and grow. how many of you have noticed this so far because it's a big, big difference, right? that's a big, big difference. the people are coming up to me they can't even believe it. we took the farmers' land away. we took the home builders' land away. to have their -- they have their land back now and they're building homes and farming their farms. they're so thankful. a lot of those regulations have been taken off, the rest are coming off. by the way we will have better protection but we'll have something that you don't have to wait 15 years for a permit and then when you go to the board, you lose. and that's a big portion of your life wiped out waiting for a permit. we won't let that happen. for our nation to really prosper, we must lower the tax on business. one of the highest in the world and we must repeal job killing obamacare. we have to do that.

[ applause ] and i can tell you we hope john mccain gets better very soon because we miss him. he's a crusty voice in washington. plus we need his vote. and he'll be back, he will be back sooner than somebody else would be back. he'll be back soon. but we need that vote and we need a number of votes because we do have to repeal obamacare. and we will end up replacing it with something that is going to be outstanding. far, far better than failing obamacare where premiums have gone up in some cases over 200% this year. where you -- every single element of it is bad and the insurance companies by the way are fleeing so people have some states you have no insurance companies. and we have some governors here and we have senators here and we

have congressmen here and women. and i will tell you, it's a very, very hard time they're having with the obamacare situation so we're going to get that done and i think we're going to surprise a lot of people. but they're pushing very hard. the republican senators are great people. but they have a lot of different states. some states need this, some states need that. but we're getting it together. and it's going to happen. right, mike? >> yes, sir. >> i think. and when it does happen, that will be a big day in america, believe me. big day in america. but we must also fight the unfair trade practices that gutted our industry and that including cracking down on the predatory online sales of foreign goods which is killing

our shoppers and shopping centers. if you look at shopping centers and jobs in stores it's been very, very tough for them. they have had a hard time closing at numbers and records that have never been seen before. so we have to stop that. the online predatory practices. since the beginning of the year, we have already created over 50,000 brand-new manufacturing jobs. and we're just getting started. we will lift our citizens from welfare to work. we will turn boarded up communities into new outposts of american commerce. and we will once again rediscover our heritage as a manufacturing nation. we used to be a manufacturing nation. not so much anymore but i will tell you, you look at michigan, you look at some states that have really moved, you know, in pennsylvania, two weeks ago they opened a mine -- the first mine that was opened in decades.

opened a mine. and you know all the people that were saying the mining job, well, we picked up 45,000 mining jobs in a short period of time and everybody was saying, well, you won't get any mining jobs was picked up 45,000 jobs and the miners are very happy with trump and with pence. and we're very proud of that. but that's just the beginning. we have jobs coming from all over. restoring american manufacturing will not only restore our wealth, it will restore our pride and pride in ourselves. it will revitalize our independence. and it will rebuild the bonds of kinship between our communities and our citizens. which has been lagging, wouldn't you say? for most of our nation's history, american credit -- you know, we see this. american presidents have understood that in order to protect our economy and our security, we must protect our

industry and much of that comes at the border. george washington encouraged americans to produce their own goods so that our young nation could become truly independent. president james garfield said of our nation's manufacturers that to them the country owes the splendor of the position it holds before the world. meaning, protect us. theodore roosevelt declared in his first message to congress that reciprocity, my favorite word, reciprocity, because we have countries that charge us 100% tax on a product and when that product is sold by them to us we brilliantly charge them nothing. people say that's free trade. no, that's stupid trade. that's really stupid trade. incredible.

you actually have people, no, we can't do that, that's free trade. so incredible, but what are -- oh, what happens in washington you wouldn't believe the things but reciprocity must be treated as the handmaiden of protection. and william mckinley proclaimed that we ought to take care of our nation and her industries first. we have to look at our nation first for a change. we have been looking the other way for a long, long time. and if you look at what's going on in the success of other nations even in europe, you look at some of those countries, one in particular, it's not fair to the united states and that's why i'm here. i believe it's one of the primary reasons you elected me and mike. i mean, that's why we're here. i think you're going to see a big, big -- i don't think, i know you're going to see one of the great differences and you're already seeing it but it's going to get more so and more so.

we're going to end up having a level playing field. i don't want to say any more than a level. but if the playing field were slanted like a little bit toward us, i'd accept that also. okay? so once again, we will celebrate craftsman, producers, innovators like the incredible men and women in this room today. we will protect our workers, promote our industry and be proud of our history because we will put america first. america will be first again. we will make america great again. remember that. and we'll meet in the same room in a year and in two years and you'll see what happened. thank you all for being here. god bless you and god bless america. thank you very much. thank you. thank you. >> hi, everyone. it's just after 4:00. i'm so happy to be back.

that was the president trying to stay on message at the white house. that was a made in america/some mining jobs are back/shopping centers are in trouble/farms are losing their land event. by trump's standards on message but he started to tweet about his son's meeting with the russians guaranteeing that the perm acloud will hang over his presidency. most politicians would have gone to the meeting like the one don jr. attended in order to get info on the opponent. that's politics. here's sean spicer on the same topic. >> look, you know i'm not going to get into the specifics of this. but it's quite often given for people in the heat of the campaign to ask what that is. that's what he did. the president's made it clear through his tweet and there was nothing as far as we know that

would lead anyone to believe that there was anything except for a discussion about adoption of the magnitsky act. >> except, sean, for the e-mail from rob goldstone that i read on don jr.'s twet feed, in their meeting they offered to provide information that would incriminate hillary and her dealings with russia. this is very high level and sensitive information but it's part of russia and its government support for mr. trump. end quote. for you mr. president, that is not politics. in fact, it looks like an awful lot like collusion with a hostile foreign power. something you repeatedly denied. your news story that's just politics and that most politicians would have attended the meeting. well, we'll dissect everything wrong with your tweets. but first, to the reporters. we have hans nichol at the white

house, along with "new york times" julie herschel davis and a former chief of staff for the cia. hans, that was the president trying to be on message at a made in america event. but as the brilliant frank bringny said the teleprompter is his quiver and all the others are his tributaries. a great way to get into his mind. but what did you make of the day's communications starting with the tweet about the meeting that his son took and book ended by this address at the white house? >> well, the address to the white house he did take one detour from the made in america event and that is to talk about health care. and he seemed to be expressing renewed optimism almost as if there's an urgency to this, it could get done quicker than many are expecting. from what i heard from the president, the news that he thinks the vote can done. he thinks they have the votes. they have to do a little horse

trading. our colleagues on capitol hill aren't exactly reflecting that in their reporting. it seems to be a much more difficult swath. the president looked at mike pence, mike, it's up to you, you have to get this across the line. we learned what his favorite word is, reciprocity. >> good to know. >> nicolle, something you can agree with, he referred to the senator -- current senator from arizona, john mccain, as a crusty voice. you'd agree with that, do you think that's accurate? crusty voice? >> it's certainly better than the prior descriptions of john mccain so i'm sure that john mccain who has the thickest skin of anyone in politics will take it as a compliment. >> i suspect you're right on that. but he said he needed mccain's vote and he wished him well and said he needs to get back soon and suggested that he's going to be coming back much more quickly than others expected. i didn't know if that was inside

information that president trump has, that mccain's recovery is going at least as publicly reported. i think those are the two bits of news. the rest of the briefing earlier today was really focused on sean spicer reverting back to the earlier trump defense and the don jr. defense. >> why would he do that? i listened -- sean is one of the most tragic figures in american political history, but why would he trot out the adoption story today? >> it's mid july and you're asking me why questions about the trump administration? i can't answer why questions. what happened i can do and how they might plan to do something but the why is beyond my far power of words to describe. that's what -- that's what the kind of line was from sean today. and that the trump tweet speaks for itself, which is a circular response we get. any reasonable observer would look at that meeting he had with the russian lawyer and say it was about the magnitsky act which can't be true as you pointed out because the pretext for the meeting was on something other than the magnitsky act. it was sharing information that

could be helpful to donald trump's presidential aspirations. again, the why, i'm going -- i'm going to kick that over to jeremy bash. he used to be in the cia, maybe he has some intel. >> jeremy, take your cue from hans there and tell me why the white house spokesperson would use the podium to revert back to a nine day old -- i was on vacation but i kept track with the story of the day. and that it was a meeting about adoption was the story nine days ago. >> because here's the deal, nicolle. i believe the president's favorite word is reciprocity. because that meeting in june was about reciprocity. if russia and the government of russia came forward with incriminating information on hillary clinton then the reciprocity would be support for relieving the magnitsky act. in fact, they're very consistent and they tell exactly the story

of what happened that i believe at that meeting. >> what do you think happened at this meeting? >> well, i believe that the russian government dangled that lawyer, natalia veselnitskaya, into that meeting. she's too well connected to have done this as a freelancer. she was there accompanied by a former soviet officer, who has strong connections to the kremlin and to the russian government. they went in there to test the waters to see whether or not in offering support by the russian government the trump campaign would bite. of course don jr.'s response i love it. and the response in meeting we're interested in this. he didn't shoo them away and that's taken as a greenlight by the russian intelligence. if you're pitched by the russian intelligence, you don't alert the authorities, you're willing to play and it seems they were willing to play. >> the excuse is now not that

collusion is illegal. not that the russians were anyone other than just a friend offering helpful oppo. but that it didn't work out. that it was bungled collusion. but bungled collusion is still collusion, isn't it? >> well, yes. i mean, far be it for me to try to get inside of sean spicer's head but it seemed like what he was saying today was trying to somehow assert that the meeting didn't -- there was no discussion in that meeting of the reason for which it was billed and if the damaging information on hillary clinton. instead, they just talked about the magnitsky act. even if that were the case, the fact that donald trump jr. accepted the meeting as jeremy said it's sort of the nut of the problem here for them. even if it never did come up in the meeting and of course we don't know what happened and it's difficult to take their word on anything that happened during that meeting given the changing and evolving story line they have given us for whether it even happened.

if there's no promised dirt during that meeting at trump tower the fact the meeting was accept and that don jr. was willing to have that conversation and willing to not alert authorities and then it wasn't disclosed by him or by anyone in the campaign including jared kushner being one of those, makes this an issue that's not going to go away. >> so julie, i talked to west wing folks today and outside advisers to donald trump and the defender of this meeting could not be found. they thought it was a stupid meeting to take and they all thought that had read through the e-mail from goldstone would have seen it was a clear quid pro quo and i really have a hard time imagining how they're going to continue to deal with the president tweeting about a meeting that no one will privately defend, a spokesperson telling a different story than jay sekulow and the president.

it's like three people juggling knives and someone is going to get hurt pretty soon. >> well, that's true. i mean, the president's tweet this morning was inexplicable for that reason. the fact he brought the conversation back to the meeting can't be really defended and his own fbi candidate director last week said it was problematic and lawyers should have been consulted and the fbi should have been called in. it's clearly just a bad set of facts for them. don jr. himself in his interview about this last week actually admitted that. he said in retrospect i would have done it differently. there's no good way to explain it away. the best thing they can hope for which seems unlikely is that people will forget about it, not focus on it. i think bob mueller is very focused on it. and there are hopes that the public might forget about it is being crushed daily by the president himself who continues to tweet about it and to talk about it in that context. >> jeremy bash, what does

mueller make of the president's tweet this morning and the continued inability to come clean about a meeting that now the whole world knows about, thanks to don jr. tweeting out the e-mail chain himself. >> well, every week explanation looks like an effort to cover this up. if you're the special prosecutor charged with investigating this matter you're looking very carefully not just at this meeting but also about conversations that happened inside the trump campaign around this meeting. in the run-up to the meeting what were those three individuals representing the trump campaign discussing among themselves. when they walked out what did they discuss, are there e-mails about that? who else did they talk to? i think bob mueller wants to interview every single person who parent -- participated in the meeting an find out what the follow-up was. >> thank you for spending a little bit of time for us. jeremy is sticking around for the hour. real life campaign operatives on

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for me this was opposition research -- they had something,

you know, maybe concrete evidence to all the stories i had been hearing about, but probably underreported for, you know, years, not just during the campaign. so i think i wanted to hear it out. >> he's actually right in thames of people are always whispering i've got opposition here. i've got information there. and sometimes people want to aggrandize their own position, they wish to be helpful. >> if it wasn't about russian opposition research, that goes on all the time. it's a big part of campaigning. >> up o -- opposition research, what it is and is not. with a couple of folks including myself who have dealt with the mosten seemly aspects of presidential politics. joining me is frank bruni, a fellow at harvard shoren stein center. joel beninton, a senior adviser to the clinton campaign and joining me by phone is msnbc

contributor, steve schmidt and jeremy bash is still with us. steve, let me get you to weigh in on two things since you're on the phone. first, the president's tweet this morning saying that anyone with a -- would have taken the meeting that don jr. took. >> well, you and i wouldn't. neither would have joel bennett or any other loyal american with a sense of rectitude. this was an attempt at conspiracy, a part of a hostile foreign power. the most senior level of a political campaign. this has nothing to do with opposition research. this was an intrusion by the russian government, by its intelligence services to the highest levels of the republican nominee, and i think one of the things that would be interesting that we don't have a good answer for is why is it that the only sweat equity at the republican platform, that the trump campaign put forward was on the

issue of arm sales to the ukrainian government which the russians wither on the opposite side of? there are so many unanswered questions, but chiefly the notion that anybody would do this is just -- could not be more wrong. most everybody on the campaign, democrat and republican, in fact, would not do it. they would go to the fbi. >> joel, does this strike you -- i mean, i think we had this conversation during the campaign on television together. the asymmetry of the way donald trump ran against you and secretary clinton was almost in hindsight unbeatable. i mean, there was no moral compass. there was no adherence to norms. there was no -- i mean, i'll let jeremy weigh in on saying i love it to a foreign adversity is illegal. jeremy, quickly, is that illegal to say i love it to a foreign adversary promising dirt on hillary clinton? >> depends on the context.

go back to joel and i'll give you a more complete idea on this. >> in hindsight, how could you have adjusted to his -- to have defeated someone like this? >> i think you have to go back to the premise and recognize he was an unconventional candidate from the beginning. he went further than a lot of people thought even in the republican primary, took a long time for that to sink in. and then you have to still try to run your campaign. you can't get caught up -- >> but the question -- but the question gets confused, to you, to jen palmieri, how did you lose to this guy? i think that when we see the sort of lengths that i went to, how could you beat someone who was willing to accept help from a foreign adversary? >> look, if 40,000 voted differently we would have beat him fair and square. >> do you think that's -- >> a lot has unfolded and we thought that russian was meddling in the summer of last year. we thought all the evidence pointed to it. hillary clinton brought it up in the e -- debate.

whether it got enough attention remains to be seen. it's tarnishing his presidency. it is tarnishing his approval ratings. you have 23% of republican, 19% who say he acted unethically and another 4% who say it legally those are not good numbers. if i was a republican congress i'd start paying attention to how bad his numbers are really below the surface with republicans. >> to piggyback on who you're saying it's -- well, at the time it wasn't the trump administration, but what donald jr. did and what the trump campaign did, there's the this ecosystem of fake news which includes all of this russian meddling. there was a new report that came out called the fake news machine. whether things were true or false we have to remember that the russians were constantly inserting anti-clinton messaging into the election. now there are the new reports that south carolina's voting

machines had over 100,000 attempted hacks. there's the question of what happened in terms of the trump administration actually accepting, you know, possible information and collusion. there's the fake news ecosystem which we know about. i wouldn't rule out that there was some vote tampering. we don't know for sure. but we need to keep following that too. >> frank, what is the gut check? to me it's that we have -- i always wake up in middle of the night, we have been asking the wrong question. i think on this question of you know how -- why couldn't hillary beat this guy? how could you win against someone -- this is what we know about because don jr. apparently got backed into the corner by a reporter from your paper. but how do you -- and this to me is the asymmetry of our last conversation was about a news organization, cnn firing investigative journalists. what do you do about the unethical nature of this president? >> you're talking about the past.

i think at this point what you do is what you see the media doing. what we're doing at this table. you demand and search answers. the story is not going away because when you peel everything back, the central question is did we actually have a fair election that was fairly fought in which we got a result that truly reflect what is a majority thinks should happen for the country. that's an enormous question. i don't recall that question existing in this form in any election in any lifetime. quite to this extent. and because that's such a big question and because everything you get from trump world is quarter truths or outright lies, emissions, evasions, every day a new piece of information comes out we can't trust what we have heard to date. we'll be back here in a year and having a similar conversation. >> jeremy bash, i want to have you weigh in on the legal side of this. what does bob mueller do with

the team that struggled so openly and really in a scary way with the truth? >> well, bob mueller i think is going to focus on a couple of important federal criminal statutes and he's going to look at the facts and apply them to the statutes. first is whether or not they crossed any legal line with respect to federal election act which prohibits possessing of value from a foreign national let alone a foreign government. in all the individuals -- >> let me stop you right there because i want to bring in steve schmidt. i don't know if you watched jay sekulow make the rounds yesterday, but he was asked about whether this was something of value. the russians promising to help hillary clinton was -- or to help hurt hillary clinton to advantage donald trump was that a violation? he had a technical answer. steve, i wonder if you think that a campaign violation may have been committed by this

meeting with don jr.? >> well, it's certainly possible. one thing i know for sure, nicolle, is that the arbiter of what's legal or not legal in this matter is not jay sekulow. ultimately the justice department will make a determination if there's enough evidence there for there to be a criminal indictment. and so the one thing we know for sure is that at every instance as this story has unfolded, and really six hour one of the administration we have never seen an administration be more untruthful. lie after lie after lie compounding on each other. this story evolving and changing really almost on a quarter hour basis. so is it possible that when they were scheming with what they thought were russian government officials that a legal line was crossed? it's highly possible. the special counsel will make the determination on that.

but we do know enough to know that it was certainly dishonorable. it was unethical. and it is abhorrent behavior that's never been seen in any campaign for the president, republican or democrat, in the modern era. >> all right. we're hitting pause. no one is going anywhere. we'll be back with this discussion on the other side of a break. to stay in control. so i asked about tresiba®. ♪ tresiba® ready ♪ tresiba® is a once-daily, long-acting insulin that lasts even longer than 24 hours. i need to cut my a1c. ♪ tresiba® ready ♪ tresiba® works like my body's insulin. releases slow and steady. providing powerful a1c reduction. my week? hectic. my weekends? my time. ♪ tresiba® ready ♪ i can take tresiba® any time of day. so if i sleep in, and delay my dose, i take it as soon as i can, as long as there's at least 8 hours between doses. once in use, tresiba® lasts 8 weeks, with or without refrigeration, twice as long as the lantus® pen.

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well, i wonder why the secret service if this was nefarious, why the secret service allowed the people in. that raised a question with me. >> it did? frank bruni, the secret service is there to protect life and limb, not to vet the ethics. >> that's true. but the extraordinary thing as soon as he said it it came out they had nothing to with don jr. at the time, and monitoring people going in and out of meetings is absurd. that's a crucial sound bite.

>> should we watch it again? >> one more time. >> one more time. please. there we go. >> well, i wondered why the secret service if this was nefarious, why did the secret service allow these people in? the president had secret service protection at that point. that raised a question with me. >> well, i wonder why it's raining sundays and sunny on other days. i mean, a lot of -- >> jay sekulow, the rest of his story was that the president wasn't there. he was in wisconsin. what does the secret service -- >> they have nothing -- >> these are things made up on the fly. they have nothing to with anything. it's like running out the clock and throwing the ball over there. >> but the secret service is sort of -- i guess i was going to see like the pope. but they attacked them too. but the secret service lashes back. i mean, they protect you. >> they're not even vetting these -- they're not like saying if i say this, what's going to happen five minutes later? remember the old episodes of

"get smart." would you believe this, that's what this damage control from the trump administration is. >> there's at layer to it that the blurred lines between the trump administration and the trump family and their political and financial interests are part of the big picture. because don jr. was not under secret service protection, but was he acting on behalf of the campaign? i would say so. >> but they're paying all his legal bills. >> but the fact there's a mushy set of influences where it's like, well, i'm not part of the administration, but i am in the white house doing this. i mean, the whole trump family is sort of pinch-hitting and that makes it very complicated to even track. >> and a white house official today told me there are some good things about having a family that's never been involved in politics before and some very bad things, put that in that category. and jay sekulow said this

bringing in of the secret service made me wonder about this. >> do you know for sure everyone who was at this meeting with donald trump jr.? >> no, i don't represent donald trump jr. and i do not know everyone for sure that was at that meeting. and the president was not at the meeting. i can tell you who was not there, the president was not aware of the meeting and he did not attend it. >> he was not at the meeting, therefore the secret service wasn't there. what do you think happened at the meeting? >> i doubt the president was there. >> why? >> i think it would have leaked out by somebody. because everything else is leaking out of that white house. i think that this is anything that would rise to the candidate in any campaign, that you said it's -- there's asymmetry there. i can't imagine anybody putting a candidate in the room even if you're a novice. >> probably tweeting -- >> elevated -- >> this is crisis mismanagement by the day. every day they dig a hole deeper. what sekulow said about the

secret service it creates another problem. we're talking about this every single day because they can't get out of their own way. >> and i would just add though, it's important to understand that a lot of trump voters are really frustrated by conversations like the ones we're having and we need to be having this conversation because it all does blur together. i would say that's actually not just sort of mismanagement, but possibly a tactic. if you can't understand anything, you can't believe anything. that's classic soviet disinformation tactic. i'm not saying they're not digging themselves a hole but i think also when you throw a lot of confetti in the air, people look around. for voters this can seem like confetti. >> it can, but if you look at trump's approval ratings with the independents it's disastrous. to give you a compare on the george w. bush who also won by losing the popular vote at this point in his presidency, he was about 20 points above water on his approval rating.

donald trump is 20 points under. with independents, he has a majority of independents who disapprove of him. you can't get things done in washington and get any of this stuff they're talking about on track if you can't demonstrate you're winning a sizable chunk of the middle. they have been losing the middle and squandering it day after day. >> maybe it's creating a lot of confusion and distraction but they're not getting any legislation moved forward. at some point, voters are going to say, what happened during this trump presidency, has anything changed to give me hope for the future? is my life better in any way? >> and his voters will give him time. that's what confounds the media. but they're not going to give him a free pass on that agenda. all right, frank, are you leaving me? no. you're staying here. frank, steve and jeremy are all staying here. it says you're leaving. the president is hitting a new record level for the president. while the downward trend is necessarily new but it should concern him when it comes to his core base.

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that's the power of and. and a new poll showing president trump hitting historic low job approval ratings, not climbing above 40%. gallup put his approval rating at 39%. beneath the six month benchmark of recent presidents including president clinton's tumult jous start. and even before the e-mails one in five republicans were saying that donald trump had done anything illegal or up ethical as joel pointed out. joining us is a former senior adviser to marco rubio and nbc news national political correspondent, steve kornacki. i know we talked all the time

and we talked about it on your appearances here about the durability of his pace. but the softest part of the kohl russian looking for results and may -- coalition are looking for results and they may see the endlessly bad news cycle. >> they may and i'm not sure we can articulate fully what it is his base wants. we can ask is it this issue or that issue, but watching the poll numbers tell me i don't know we can answer that. today is july 17, 2017. go back to july 17, 2016 we had a brand-new poll. he had historically low numbers. no candidate has been less popular on this day a year ago, his favorable rating was 27%. so you can't win with that. the republican party as a whole was running 22 points behind the democratic party on the image.

on the question of donald trump's views mainstream? 60% said no. his approval ratings that's roughly the same range his support fell in last year. we looked at it, republicans said, you know what, not only is it a bad campaign but a losing campaign. he'll lose a big chunk of republicans. he got 90% of republicans and he won the election. i don't know that anything has changed. >> alex, do you think -- let's bring alex into the conversation. do you think that republicans in congress are as immune to historically low poll numbers as donald trump is? >> they're not. especially when you get closer to the midterms. congressional republicans support president trump as long as he's going to sign their legislation into law. the problem is they're not passing much legislation. and if they fail to pass health care reform, if they fail to pass corporate tax reform, comprehensive tax reform, then they start asking themselves what's the point of tank all of

this flak for supporting a president if we can't get legislation to him to sign? >> what are you hearing from republicans on the hill about whether or not he's undermined or done enough or done too much or needs to do more when it comes to health care, calling the house bill mean, saying the republican bill needed more heart. what's the state of mind -- >> if health care reform fails it's president trump's fault. big things happen when you have presidential leadership and we haven't seen much from this president. he has yet to give a press conference about it. his tweets are all over the map. they're celebrating things like made in america week when they should be talking about health care reform. this is the most unpopular piece of legislation we have seen in a generation and they're doing nothing to do sell it. >> would your analysis be because that he doesn't need to. the base is with him -- >> well, my analysis on that would be that -- think of the psychology of the average

republican member of congress, think of how they reacted to everything i is a sid a about the campaign last year. they thought he was a loser. a lot of them didn't endorse them. a lot of republicans said i'll check his name off because he's the republican but i'm not campaigning for him. paul ryan cut him loose three weeks before election day. he put all the republican members of congress on a call and said you know what, if you off to disown this guy, disown him. they thought he was a dead candidate walking because everything he was saying was inflammatory. he wasn't talking about the issues. he wasn't putting coherent proposals out there. he had all of this personal scandals the "access hollywood" thing. they thought he was a loser to drag them down. not only did he win, that was critical in and of itself, here's a key if you're a republican member of the congress. he won 90% of republican voters. the polls all last year not only was he going to lose, but he was shedding republican support. he wasn't a true conservative. i think that -- >> well, joe scarborough has an op-ed out there.

he's getting 90% of a shrinking party -- >> we called it a shrinking party last year. >> there's fewer registered republicans -- >> the reason we're here in the middle of july with revelations coming last week, you couldn't imagine revelations -- >> but he's -- he's driving people out of the republican party. >> the message that the average member of congress took, and like democratic members of congress they worry more about primaries in this age that we live in than general elections. he understands the base of the party better than i do. he has a stronger bond and you know what? i don't know i understand what that bond is. that's a scary thing for politicians. >> the economic anxiety. >> but when you look at a bunch of longitudinal studies it's like a culture war like brexit. than any specific policy. you can't win a culture win with

facts. you have to go in and say what is it that really makes people affiliate themselves with this idea of making america great again and then you can start drilling down. but first of all, rational arguments are not really the motivation for a lot of people. and what i would say is that donald trump in counties that he won is still pulling about a 50% approval rating, which is about 15% higher than the national average. so people have not abandoned him in the places where he's run. and they may eventually, but really the math is for congressional republicans, they have to figure out how to try anger late between the sen trisz in their base and then donald trump has shown that he's willing to pill other republicans who don't hugh to him and right now he's still too dangerous to divide. >> thanks for breaking it down. up next, on top of the low approval rating and the russia investigation dominating the news cycle, the president is still hoping to get a bill passed to repeal and replace obamacare.

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passed to repeal and replac there is concern among those who support the healthcare bill that this extension is going to give the opponents of the bill more traction. what specifically is president trump going to do to try to get this bill over the finish line? >> he's been very active on the phone. he's going to continue to meet with senators. i think he'll have some senators over tonight. he's been very active over the weekend. the vice president has been extremely engaged as well. we'll continue those

discussions. >> pgs press secretary sean spicer says president trump. but the white house may alsoing going by any means necessary. the white house has reached out to respective primary senators for arizona senator jeff flake. erica, what is going on behind closed doors on capitol hill? i mean, jeff flake is as conservative as sort of as an old-fashioned conservative can get? >> well, as you know, jeff flake was probably the most outspoken senator during the campaign against president trump, and the white house seems to want to settle scores. but i don't know why they would pick now to do it when they need senator flake's vote on health care and there's not a single vote to spare. as you know, the vote this week that was planned has been put

off due to senator mccain's absence following surgery. i don't think anyone knows whether that really twhartd senator mcconnell's plans. however, every day that bill is not dead, it's alive, and that's where it is right now. and that's good news for senator mcconnell and the president. >> erica, do senate republicans look more wear ill at the white house or senate democrats? i guess dean heller was attacked by the trump super pack for, as you said, not falling into line on health care. jeff flake is now going to get primaried by a reported trump ally. i mean, are senate republicans walking around more sort of skeptical and anxious about what the white house is going to do or are they watching their flank from the democrats? >> well, i think as some of your earlier guests srp talking about, any republican in the current political environment is probably more worried about a

primary from their right than about their general election. that said, as you know, there really are only two senate republicans in this midterm cycle who have anything to worry about in either regard, and those are senator heller and senator flake, both of whom are he merging as key votes onel health care. senator heller in particular we're all dying to know what he thinks. he has yet to he merge today. we're all going to be looking for him later today when the senators return for votes. but i don't know that the white house gets very far by poking these senators when they need them this legislation. >> steve smith, way in on the practice of poking members of your own party on twitter and in the press as opposed to picking up the phone and trying to woou them. >> typically it doesn't work. look, politics is a

transactional business and the trump administration is ultimately going to need their votes on tangs reform and other initiatives. and ultimately the last thing in the world the trump administration wants is to see a democratic house or a democratic senate with subpoena power. so you talk about a self-defeating strategy, unbelievable. >> jeremy bash, weigh in on the pearls for the republicans on the intel kmelz of getting too mired in the politics of the trump white house. >> yeah. they have to strike this very independent r cord, here s nichole. they have to show that they are willing to pursue this investigation and the facts wherever it leads. so there is some peril if they line up too closely on the russia investigation or other matters. >> alex, does marco rubio like mr. trump. >> personally, they get along fine. they obviously have some big policy disagreements. >> on what? on -- i mean, the whole presidential primary dpan, you know, they were arguing over

healthcare reform. >> i remember, but sometimes -- >> immigration reform is a classic example. free trade is a clask example. human rights where marco -- >> but what fight has he picked with him since he's been president. >> human rights. he's fought the white house and criticized them when they had, for instance, warmer relations with ejust a minute. marco is a strong supporter of free trade and has been critical of this administration when they have been trying to withdraw from the world. >> joe scarborough left are the republican party. we were talking about polling, a shrinking number of people identifying themselves as republican. what do you think at this moment the state of the republican party is? >> i think it's if a bit of disarray and i think it's in danger. joe scarborough left for a reason. we're talking about this for a reason. right now donald trump is behaving in ways that many voters disapprove of. he's behaving in ways that violate republican ort doeks all

over the place. and your question to alex about marco rubio was a bigger question. you're asking why are we seeing this degree of acquiescence. and i think the main story is when and where does it end because it's got to at some point. >> thank you for jumping on with us. that does it for this hour. mtp daily starts right now. katy, thanks for helping out. >> hope your vacation was nice. and if it is monday, are the trump faithful having doubts? tonight r trump country troubles. our new poll shows president trump slipping with his base, but russia is not the topic moving the needle down. so what is? plus, the republican healthcare bill in limbo again. >> the president is going to be engaged. he's going to get this done. >>