john now four weeks and two days since that storm. that is our broadcast on a thursday night. thank you so very much for being here with us and good night from nbc news headquarters here in new york. okay. if i were president, i might not want to talk about this either. um, when the trump administration's decision about this particular country was announced last month, the country involved put out a statement, an unusual statement and response. they put out a statement saying they felt the need to, quote, express our incomprehension about what the trump administration had just done. across the spectrum in the united states, the reaction was the same and it was unanimous among all sorts of different kinds of people who you might think would otherwise have really different perspectives on this but across the board everybody else incomprehending. the former board of u.s.

military in that region called the decision by the trump administration puzzling. a top human rights lawyer who operated extensively in that country called the trump administration's decision bewildering saying there's no reason and, quote, it makes no sense whatsoever, none, zero. long-time u.s. ambassador of the neighboring country said to me what they did makes no sense whatsoever. that same ambassador did have one speculative explanation. he said it was possible the trump administration did what they did, quote, out of sheer incompetence, but otherwise, frankly, it just doesn't make sense. across the board, those are all different times ypes of peoplew tend to have different reaction, but they're all just baffled. we have no idea where this came

from. and what they were so baffled by had to do with this part of the world, this big belt of countries, belt of big countries that makes up most of the lower tier of sahara desert. we're talking about mali and niger and neejia and chad. two special force soldiers were just killed in niger. turns out we do have several hundred american troops serving in niger, possibly as many as a thousand according to what secretary james mattis told us

today. but i think it helpful to see the map, in part to see which country borders which country, if you're not that familiar with africa. niger is a former french colony but in terms of its area, it twice of side of france. mali is about the same size. these are large, land-locked countries. their regional concerns are very intertwined. by necessity they end up involved and mixed up in each other's business for the worse and for the better and the country just east of niger, the country of chad, that's the country that caused all the military expert and human rights people and everybody, even their own government to express profound surprise and bewilder minute a few weeks ago when the trump administration did something really strange about

that country that might have actually just been a mistake. still to this day doesn't make much sense what the trump administration did. it might have just been a screw up by them. but what they did also might explain why we have just had these four absolutely unbelievable, gut-wrenching emotional days in american politics and in d.c. in particular. because if i were them, would rather divert attention to anything, even unbelievable unpalatable discussions rather than talk about this. do you remember back in 2012 islam being miic militant took timbuktu and a whole swath of northern m aali, they declared

sharia law, destroying toombs and hair -- heritage sites. france led thousands of troops to help take back mali, to free timbuktu. they just took back whole swaths of that country from the militant groups. and france went in full force. there were not there alone. they were in support of the government of mali and they were there with a big regional force of african troops, which in some cases had a lot of experience already fighting against thesis la -- these islamic forces.

when the french and african forces routed timbuktu, the french thereafter decided they would stay. they set up a regional force to continue to fight islamic extremism and keep them from taking territory in that part of the world. part of the reason you can tell that chad in particular had been super valuable to france in that fight is because when france decided they'd stay in the region, they'd leave troops there and set up a regional headquarters to run a permanent regional operation against islam being mill taitancy, they set u their headquarters in chad. that has been headquartered in

chad since 2014. 2014 is when obama sent troops to help for the first for the girls captured and kidnapped by boka raton. the planes that looked for those girls in that military operation was, again, chad. the u.s. military as well set up their headquarters for that fight in chad. then in 2015, another permanent multi-national joint task force was set up to fight islamic militant activity where groups like boko haram, headquartered

in chad. and there's a reason there was so many regional activity in that region of the world. bo boko haram had a lot of territory. that's why these efforts were set up. there's a reason all of these groups were headquartered in chad. because all the experts say that pound for foupound, that milita in chad and the chadian special forces are the best, most battle hardened, most effective military for fighting islam

bei extremism in that part of the world. in 2015, they brought in troops from niger and chad and they kind of routed them. they claimed to be a new islamic emirates and they were the other part of the caliphate. but that regional military effort against them led out of chad broke that stuff up, took back all those towns, shut them down. and chad is not a rich country. they've got oil so they've got a little bit of money, but they've also got a dictator who takes care of most of that. it a large country, it's mostly poor, but for a variety of reasons, they have put profound resources into leading the military counterterrorist fight

in that part of the world. in march of this year, the united states led 27 countries in a massive military exercise in chad. it was called flintlock, 2,000 u.s. military personnel participated in it. they could have done this anywhere in africa. there was a reason they did it in chad. in this country we tend to be more focused when we think about isis and focus on them more in the middle east and iraq and syria. the other place they got pretty close to declaring a caliphate was in this part of the world. and it's all interlocking related groups, al qaeda-linked groups, there's boko haram, but for all of them the lead military effort against them in that part of the world really has been the military of chad. and it's interesting, even though the chad military has been leading the fight against these groups, there haven't

actually been that many attacks by these groups inside chad. and there's not a lot of chadian civilians who have been joining the islamic militant groups. nigeria has a really big problem with them. nigerian goes and fights them and chad goes to. mali has a big problem, they fight them and then chad goes too. it's not necessarily their home-grown problem but chad leads it. in nigeria and mali and to a lesser extent niger, chad lead the fight. they're all headquartered in chad, including the ones that we participated in. that kind of sort of military

geeio spatial orientation usually don't matter to us here in the united states but enter the trump administration. september 24th this year, three and a half weeks ago, trump administration announced its new muslim ban, which they would prefer you don't call a muslim ban anymore. he declared he would sign a complete ban on muslims coming into the united states. it's gone through several different iterations all of since then, all of which have gone nowhere in the courts. but on september 24th, they included a new ban that included a new list of countries from which people from those countries would not be able to come to this country. it random. we don't know how this happens. they dropped iraq, they dropped sudan, but then they added in north korea, they added in venezuela and they added in chad.

and the additions were weird. they were notably weird at the time. north korea was a strange addition, not because north korea isn't a country that the u.s. worries about right now, the reason that north korea is weird is because north koreans don't really come to the united states anyway. it not like north koreans easily get passports, let alone visas. as for venezuela, that was narrowly targeted. they targeted families of members of the government. at least that was aimed at something especially but chad, they just blanketed chad. and there was this curious explanation of how chad ended up on this list. the "new york times" reported that neither the state department or defense department had been consulted by the trump administration to put chad on the list. they further reported that officials at both those agencies, state and defense, were vehemently opposed to chad

being on this list. but for some reason the trump administration did it anyway. and what made it worse was the purported explanation for why chad was on the list. out of all the countries listed on the travel ban, chad is the only one described by the trump administration as being on the list because, quote, several terrorist groups are active within chad. oh, yeah, that's the only company where that's happening. maybe you can make that case that chad has a terrorism problem, certainly they've had some attacks, but they're not the -- if that's the problem, they're not the problem. if that's the reason you end up on the travel ban list, even just in that part of the world, why wouldn't you pick nigeria, mali, why wouldn't you pick iraq, afghanistan. no, chad's the country that has terrorism? absolutely baffling. absolutely baffling. that is why you got all those quote from the expert, bewildering, puzzling, no reason, this makes no sense.

the day after the travel ban was announced, the new york city interviewed the travel expert. he called putting chad on that last a knee-jerk move rather than a careful decision, one that could. americans in harm's way. he said there's no incentive to label chad soft on terrorism, which they definitely are not. i want you to put a pin in part of that "this could put americans in harm's way." he was the state department expert on chad until last year. september 25th he gave that warning. on friday of last week the government of chad announced that they had completed the withdrawal of all chadian troops from their neighboring country

niger, where for years they have been fighting isis-linked militants. the reuters bureau in the region reported immediately upon the withdrawal of those chadian troops, boko haram attacks started to tick up in niger. people started to leave their villages immediately. chad announced that their troops were all out this past friday but they also announced that the removal of those troops was the culmination of a two-week long process. it took them two weeks to get all those troops out of there, which means they started withdrawing their troops from niger the last week in september. if woe're literal, that means they pulled their troops out

starting friday, september 29th, which would be the friday after the trump administration made this baffling decision to insult and harm our closest military al lie in th ly in that region. but those chadian troops were really doing something in niger. they were protecting those villages and the region from isis and those chadian troops immediately had an effect of enabling and emboldening isis attacks. those troops started pulling out best as we can tell, last week

of september, september 29th right after the trump administration inexplicably did what they did. right after that, that's when four army soldiers got attacked as part of a large contingent of soldiers. no wonder the president didn't want to talk about it. maybe he didn't want to about u.s. troops being killed by isis-affiliated fighters at a time when he wants credit for defeating isis. this is the deadliest -- i mean, it's being called a mistake at

best by everyone who knows the region. just days after that policy decision, our best and most experienced and most battle hardened regional allies in that part of the world pulled out of that part of the world and went home and then american soldiers were attacked. the spokesman from the u.s. military said the ambush that kie killed that four american soldiers was not expected, he said the american troops had done the same patrols over the last six months with no problems. but this one was different, certainly in its result and potentially in its cause. and now today in the fourth day of washington turning itself inside out over the president refusing to speak about the deaths of those service members and why they were killed and where they were killed and what they were doing there, today, today we finally got the first concrete information about why the trump administration might have made that baffling decision in the first place that so upset this military ally of ours, that

precipitated their withdrawal from the country where our troops were attacked just days later. there was initial speculation on this travel ban thing that maybe this had something to do with exxon. chad is poor country but it does have oil reserves. the government of chad had gone after exxon saying they had not been paying their taxes. the country demanded something like $70 billion in fines, they wanted hundreds of millions in overdue royalty. the governor of chad drove this really hard bargain with exxon. yeah, the ceo of exxon for most of this time was rex tillerson. and maybe that made him mad. that dispute was settled in june for some undisclosed sum, we don't know. but there had been speculation because of the weirdness of this decision about chad, the lack of explanation for how this happened to chad that they ended up in the travel ban that maybe

this was some exxon business revenge, some exxon business decision that leaked into the rex tillerson state department. for all of former state department experts have been speaking out about how bad and dumb this decision was, rex tillerson himself said nothing about it. but today the associated press reported something even more pedestrian. when the trump decided to make a new travel ban, they told countries all over the world, if you want to stay off our travel ban, you have to send the united states a simple passport so the homeland security department can determine if your passports are secure and they can't easily be faked. that was the across-the-board order from the homeland security department. weep need to you print us up a new sample passport and send it

to us. they gave country as 50-day time limit. in chad that turns out to have been a chad had to start issuing passports for about six months. part of the problem is an office supply problem. they use a special paper like all countries do that print passports, it's a specially designed, supposed to be forgery-proof paper to print these up. chad ran out of that paper. at the time the u.s. was demanding these sample passports be submitted by every country on earth, chad was unable to print a new one because they didn't have the paper. according to the a.p. today, they asked the president if they could submit a recently printed passport and the trump administration apparently said no and ignored everything about

that country and the fact that we headquarter our military efforts in that part of the world in that part of country because they work with us so well. they just ignored that and said, hey, they didn't get the paperwork in. so chad got on the list. and that week chad said we're pulling out of niger. and now we are where we are. like i said, if i were the president, i wouldn't want to talk about this either. what we've had instead is a four day long gut wrenching fight about something that should never be discussed in a public process. and that culminated with john kelly, who lost his son in afghanist afghanistan. and in a quivering voice, he

sla explained what he personally was told when his son had died in combat and he attacked a congresswoman who had heard what president trump said to a family about their loved one and she put it on speaker phone and let someone listen to it. it's inconceivable that he might have directed the discussion of these private matters by his senior staff. but the only reason the subject matter is being discussed in any political context at all is because the president still will not talk about what happened in niger and how and why those american troops lost their lives there. we knew from reporting in politico last night that national security staff prepared the president a statement for him to give the day after the deaths happened in niger.

he didn't give that statement. he still hasn't. he still won't talk about it. when he was pressed on it after two weeks of ignoring those deaths, the president diverted the public pressure on that matter into instead these discussions and these attacks about notifications and condolences for the bereft. the only reason that public discussion has happened now for four straight days with all of the emotional strain it has caused to the country and caused to so many hurting people is because of the president's diversion of questions about what happened in niger. well, now we're starting to figure out why he might not want to talk about that. when you have a cold

stuff happens. shut down cold symptoms fast with maximum strength alka seltzer plus liquid gels. helping small businesses.ut, jamie -- damage your vehicle? we got you covered. [ glass shatters ] property damage? that's what general liability's for. what?! -injured employee? -ow. workers' comp helps you pay for a replacement. what's happening? this is carla. how's it going? and if anything comes up, our experts are standing by. ♪ boo!

whentertaining us,es getting us back on track,hing? and finding us dates. phones really have changed. so why hasn't the way we pay for them? introducing xfinity mobile. you only pay for data and can easily switch between pay per gig and unlimited. no one else lets you do that. see how much you can save. choose by the gig or unlimited. xfinity mobile. a new kind of network designed to save you money. call, visit or go to xfinitymobile.com.

right after chief of staff john kelly gave emotional marks at the white house briefing room today after he talked about the way presidents talk to grieving military families, after he talked about how he was told about the death of his own son who died in combat, john kelly opened it up to questions and this was the first question he got from the briefing room. >> reporter: why were they in niger? we were told they weren't in armored vehicles and there was no orcov no air cover. what are the specifics and why were they there? >> i would start by saying there is an investigation. >> why were they there? why were they in niger? what this actually started out as was the worst combat fatalities of the trump era, the

story of four u.s. special forces soldiers killed in the line of duty in the central african nation of niger. the reason because it became a white house story is because the president made no acknowledgement of those deaths. he still hasn't talked about it. he won't apparently. nbc news reporting about the swarm of unanswered questions that the pentagon is still trying to get answered on this attack, things as basic as where the attack happened or whether those soldiers had the right protective equipment. one official telling nbc news today that the level of confusion during and after the mission was, quote, tremendous. joining suus is courtney kuby. obviously general kelly gave those very emotional remarks about condolence processes for the families of service members

who were killed. but when it came to explaining what happened in niger, he put most of this off to there being an ongoing investigation. have you been able to flesh anything else out at the pentagon in terms of knowing what happened? >> general mcmaster, i asked him about niger and he also was relatively circumspect. the incident is under investigation. that's one reason we're not hearing a lot of very specific facts yet. at some point u.s. africa command is going to have to put out more details about what happened. but right now they are really hiding behind the fact that it's under investigation to give us any real specifics. one of the things you talked about in the intro, the confusion. that's a theme that people have really been stressing with me over the pass two weeks since this happened was that they were not expecting this patrol. this was a patrol they had done 29 times in the past six months. they were not expecting trouble. they went to see some leaders,

local leaders and pay their respects and visit with them and they were ambushed. it was very unexpected. so there is always whenever there's a death of a service member like this, there's what's called a line of duty investigation, it's a standard investigation and then now there's this more informal one that's also ongoing, which includes looking at the very basic facts of what happened here, everything from who was actually there when the gunfire and the rpgs started coming in. why were they at the village for as long as they were there, why were they visiting these leaders as long as they were? everything. and of course it led to one of the support soldiers, sergeant johnson, he wasn't found immediately had they all left, when they left the scene. >> courtney, in terms of the handling of this issue in washington, obviously what has led this to splai into such an emotionally frustrate and far

ranging discussion about service members' families has been the president's reluctance to acknowledge publicly these deaths, to put out even a statement written by somebody else about what happened to explain to the american people the basics of the fact that these service members were lost or the circumstances in which they were lost. do you have any insight, does the pentagon have any insight into why people like general mattis have been willing to spell out the basics and talk to reporters about this but the president himself has been either totally mum or diverting questions to other matters? >> i don't know why, to be honest with you. we don't have a lot of facts from the pentagon or from u.s. africa command. in the furst 48 hours or so after this attack occurred, details were very, very scarce and that was because there was an american soldier who was missing. in the confusion on the battlefield, you know, he was -- they were evacuated, both the injured, the killed and the

uninjured, and he was still there. and there was an extensive search for him. so in those first 48 hours, we didn't get a lol lot of details because there was this desperate hope by the u.s. mitt that no one would find out that he was missing. they were worried some terrorist group in the area would find him dead or alive. forl local forces found him and he was turned home as we just saw in this gut wrenching video of his widow greeting his remains. the american military has just not been forthcoming. part of this is i don't think in the first week or two they knew what happened there. there was confusion about basic facts of who was flying the medivac helicopter. there was a french military

hospital and a contract helicopter, that goet came in and picked the people up. >> again, but also raising the question of it not in armored vehicles, no u.s. search and rescues available for these guys, a lot of unanswered questions about the intel that led to this patrol happening, whether or not there was a regional support issue here. a lot still to learn and a lot of curiosity about the president's reticence, at least on my part. courtney kube, thanks very much. >> thanks, rachel. >> there is a developing story right now that is getting very little attention outside the communities it most affects. it actually affects the whole country and that story is coming up next. heads up. (sigh) ( ♪ ) dad: molly! trash! ( ♪ )

whoo! ( ♪ ) mom: hey, molly? it's time to go! (bell ringing) class, let's turn to page 136, recessive traits skip generations. who would like to read? ( ♪ ) molly: i reprogrammed the robots to do the inspection. it's running much faster now. see? it's amazing, molly. thank you. ( ♪ ) my dbut now, i take used tometamucil every day.sh thank you. it traps and removes the waste that weighs me down, so i feel lighter. try metamucil, and begin to feel what lighter feels like. i enjoy the fresher things in life.o.

fresh towels. fresh soaps. and of course, tripadvisor's freshest, lowest... ...prices. so if you're anything like me... ...you'll want to check tripadvisor. we now instantly compare prices... ...from over 200 booking sites... ...to find you the lowest price... ...on the hotel you want. go on, try something fresh. tripadvisor. the latest reviews. the lowest prices.

this is just a heads up that we've been tracking that hasn't made national news. you might remember that the secretary of the veterans affairs got caught up in the kind of scandal trump cabinet officials keep getting caught up in now when he took a ten-day taxpayer funded work trip to europe with his wife that included trips to four palaces, a river cruise, lots of days with no work on the schedule at all and a trip to see the wimbledon women's final! taxpayers paid for it. the v.a.'s inspector general is investigating that trip. fresh off that, the v.a. is now out with their proposal to

overhaul health care for america's veterans. ever since it emerged that veterans were waiting too long to see their v.a. doctors and some documents were being falsified to cover up those long wait times, conservative groups who have long wanted to get rid of the v.a. because they see it as socialism, conservative groups capitalized on those report and that scandal to pro toes their own solution. their solution is to dismantle the v.a., privatize the v.a. health care system and put veterans into the private health care system and have them pay insurance companies for whatever coverage they can get. whatever problems the v.a. health systems have had, they don't want it taken away. remember when ben carson proposed privatizing the v.a.,

and it got him an angry personalized letter from eight of the country's leading veterans organizations. well, now heads up. now the trump administration's v.a. is now the with this brand new vaguely worded health care proposal called the veterans consolidated access & rewarding experiences act. it's code for privatizing and voucherizing veterans' health care. this has just arisen and just been proposed. veterans organizations have not come out in full force to say whether or not they agree with this. but the veterans committee will review this next tuesday and we expect veterans will be on hand to testify. if you've been like me watching

this for the last few years seeing conservative groups circling v.a. health care trying to figure out how to get rid of it, this appears to be one of the first efforts to do that, coming from inside the federal government, from inside the trump administration. this could be a big deal. watch this space. for the holidays, we get a gift for mom and dad. and every year, we split it equally. except for one of us. i write them a poem instead. and one for each of you too. thats actually yours. that one. yeah. regardless, we're stuck with the bill. to many, words are the most valuable currency.

last i checked, stores don't take "words." some do. not everyone can be that poetic voice of a generation. i know right? such a burden. the bank of america mobile banking app. the fast, secure and simple way to send money.

when you're clocking out. sensing your every move and automatically adjusting to help you stay effortlessly comfortable. there. i can also help with this. does your bed do that? oh. i don't actually talk. though i'm smart enough to. i'm the new sleep number 360 smart bed. let's meet at a sleep number store. this is "nbc nightly news" december 1st, 2005. >> it's a crisis that grows

deeper by the day, tens of thousands of hurricane refugees trapped and dissolving into chaos. >> i haven't eaten in like five days. >> how is a 5 day old instant going to survive out here with no milk and no water? >> reporter: victims say they need help now! >> it is wrong. we have no water. you could have dropped it from the sky, from the helicopters. >> the failure to get water to the people of new orleans became one of the lasting images, a searing detail about the response to hurricane katrina. at the time, fema hand picked one company to deliver bottled water to people who survived katrina. they were called lipsey mountain bottled water. there were problems with that. it was determined that they did not consistent live meet time

performance requirements of the contract. they missed nine out of 14 deadlines, paid nearly $900,000 in mysterious unsupported costs and we know the people of new orleans didn't get the water. but apparently fema believes in second chances because after that experience with that company, just over a decade ago, fema has just granted lipsey now going by composite analysis group, they've just granted them a new contract for $215 million this time to deliver bottled water after hurricane harvey hit texas. they found this week that fema has awarded $2.2 billion in new contracts since august 25th when hurricane harvey and you might expect a lot of outlay like that in a hurricane year like this, but would you expect that money to be spent this way, on september 5th, a $74 million award to build mobile homes and their only public presence is a

godaddy wb site which lists neither a phone number, e-mail address or information on who runs the company. the address belongs to a house to a residential neighborhood in florida. the man who answered refused to provide his name and answer questions, he referred them to fema and fema refused to order them. give again, they got a $74 million award from fema. >> how did you find this? >> we have great analysts at bloomberg. we have data analysts who go through federal contracts every day. they scrubbed this stuff coming from the gsa and puts it in a spreadsheet, started looking at it and stuff started looking a little funny. >> i am finding sort of dubious

seeming companies getting large contracts is one thing and i expect that we'll learn more about those types of contracts as we see what their response is like and whether little seeming companies have surprising resources to really provide these things they've been contracted for. what i am surprised by now is companies that have negative documented track records from previous similar disasters getting even bigger contracts now. there's no black ball system? >> that's right. fema keeps a long list of vetted contractors that they have to deploy when disasters strike like we've seen in the past month. when you see three hurricanes hit in the span of a month, they quickly blow through that and have to turn to whoever is next in line. the person next in lien if they changed the name of their company, for example, has a previous track record. doesn't seem like there's a system in place to vet that or whoever was in charge of giving that contract gave it much mind and cared about it.

the impetus here for obvious reasons is to get money out of door, on the ground and get supplies delivered. that's tricky when you have to do it so quickly and you don't have the system in place to do this properly and to vet these compani companies. >> obviously fema is of great concern right now because we've had this terrifically terrible hurricane season and because of what persists in puerto rico and the u.s. virgin islands in terms of really dire conditions there. there's morpheme a personnel in texas, even as puerto rico goes to a month without drinking water. is there anything that tells you in a holistic sense whether or not fema is well run right now in. >> they are under tremendous pressure. brock long, the head of fema right now, is a seasoned, life-long emergency management guy. does the reporting that we've done indicate that they are aware of any problems in house about their procurement

situation? it does not. >> well, we'll see. matthew phillips, policy editor for bloomberg "business week," thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having me. >> stay with us. technologies. we are transforming jet engines into turbo powered safety inspectors. dairy cows into living, breathing, data centers. and though it seems like magic, it's not. it's people and technology working together. magic can't make digital transformation happen. but we can. you know what's difficult? adulting... hi, guys. i'm back. time to slay! no,i have a long time girlfriend. you know what's easy? building your website with godaddy. get your domain today and get a free trial of gocentral. build a better website in under an hour.

if you've got a life, you gotta swiffer ... dealership has great customer service ... (muffled voice) ... and has great deals! ... and has ... ... complimentary donuts. ... that's the one! cars.com. over 5 million expert and user reviews.

can you say with absolute certainty that the election results were not skewed as a result of russian interference, especially given what we've learned just in the last few weeks? >> yes, the intelligence

community's assessment is that the russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election. >> that's not true. today the director of the central intelligence agency said something that was untrue. very important and not true. he said the intelligence community's assessment is that the russian meddling did not affect the outcome of our election. not true. quoting from the intelligence community's january report, quote, we did not make an assessment of the impact that russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. so the cia director made exactly the opposite statement to what the intelligence community put in writing just a few months ago. he got blowback from those comment and the cia had to put out a clean-up statement. quote, the intelligence assessment with regard to the russian election meddling has not changed and the director did not intend to suggest that it

had, except for what he said directly on tape. >> yes, the intelligence community's assessment is that the russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election. >> that's not true. the cia director insists the director didn't really mean it when he said it. does make you kind of wonder why he said it then, right?

by listening to an thiaudiobook on audible.ame and this guy is just trying to get through the day. keeping it together. losing it. upgrade your commute. ride with audible.

something a little weird happened in wisconsin last election day.

the state had ranked second in the country in voter participation in the previous two presidential elections, in 2008 and 2012, but in 2016 wisconsin saw its lowest voter turnout in nearly two decades. in a new piece from "mother jones", one theory as to why, "this was the first election under a new wisconsin law that made voting harder. they have a new voter i.d. law in wisconsin. so they found over 11% of registered voters who didn't vote in 2016 were, quote, deterred in some way by the voter i.d. law, either because they lacked irchl.d., they beli they land i.d. or were told at the poll that they weren't valid. that translates to as many as 45,000 people in those democratic strongholds in wisconsin who might have been discouraged from voting. 45,000.

hillary clinton lost wisconsin by 22,000 votes. so voter i.d. might account for more than double the margin of votes by which she lost? in july 2014, u.s. attorney general eric holder called wisconsin's voter i.d. law pernicious >> can i spend the weekend writing questions for eric holder? >> yes. anything i absorb thereafter will make me pass out. >> there are so many. can't wait. >> thank you. >> thank you, rachel. a white house chief of staff john kelly had a job to do today. take t