to that announcement. a lot to break down this hour as well. a presidential tweet storm for the ages. donald trump lashing out in many directions today but it's one tweet in particular that has the white house scrambling. jared kushner makes his first appearance since the michael flynn guilty plea. talking about middle east peace but do the revelations from the flynn plea deal doom kushner's effort to broker a deal in the middle east. i'll talk to former israeli prime minister live on the program and disbelief in alabama. a new poll of republicans in the controversial senate race show they're standing by their man but polls show a down to the wire finish in that state. all of that coming up. but we begin with the president's busy fingers this sunday. it started in the predawn hours once again accusing fire fbi director james comey of lying and continue from there.

a level of activity that has senators on both sides of the aisle concerned. >> the president should have not have a comment whatsoever on either of these investigations and the only thing he should be doing is directing all of his staff and associates to fully cooperate. >> there's an ongoing criminal investigation. comey may be part of it. you tweeting comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own per ill. i'd be careful if i were you, mr. president. >> i've been here for 25 years now. there is a kind of instability, unpredict blt. it's one issue after the other. all this has a tweet from saturday continues to raise questions about whether the president put himself in more jeopardy when it comes to obstruction of justice. we have a lot to break down in the wake of the michael flynn plea deal. the white house has an explanation for that problematic saturday tweet. it wasn't the president who wrote it, they say. will that, though, hold water

with investigators. the president turns his attention on the fbi. is he preparing to make a move against special investigators, special counsel robert mueller and who else does michael flynn plea deal put in the legal cross hairs. joining me to discuss all of this, all star panel including nick acreman, matt miller, dana milbank and sarah westwood. great to have all of you with us. and we have my good friend rick tyler. let's start with matt if i can. matt, after the president's tweet about the fbi, you tweeted out, oh, my god. he just admitted to obstruction of justice. really not mincing your words here. the white house is saying that it actually wasn't the president who tweeted that out. it was his attorney john dowd who dictated that tweet.

do you buy that explanation? >> it's possible. i think we've seen the last few months that he's a competent lawyer. there's no reason we should take the white house at its word. look at the number of times they have been caught lying about the russia investigation and when their lies unravel they cover them with new lies. there's no reason to take them at their word. the reason the president's tweet is so problematic, if it's true, it would show that when he committed that important act of asking james comey to back off the flynn investigation and followed that up with firing comey when he didn't do what he wanted that he had a corrupt purpose at heart. he knew that mike flynn had broken the law and mike flynn had broken the law to cover up not just his own lies but to cover up for the entire white house. that's something we learned on friday when michael flynn pled guilty and the president was trying to obstruct justice and

further that cover-up by asking comey to go easy on him. it was a huge admission from the president, whether it was him or his attorney i don't know it makes much difference. >> we always have this debate about whether the president's teets are official policy. that has something the white house has come out and said. that the president's tweets speak for themselves. they're official statements in their own right. even if, in fact, the lawyer dictated these words to the president but he put them out on his official account does that absolve him from any legal jeopardy? >> in no way. he's made an admission, he's made an admission over twitter. even if the lawyer made that admission on his behalf, it's still an admission against donald trump that he was knowledgeable that michael flynn broke the law. now the question becomes, when we say broke the law, what does that mean? if you look at the alcushion

that michael flynn signed off on for the plea, what's really, really significant here is that the materiality element of the false statement and that is a critical element of a false statement, the materiality element here is that his falsehoods obstructed the fbi from learning about the connection between the campaign and russia during the campaign period. and the collusion and conspiracy with the russians. so what that means is, you don't see that in this allocation. the details are not spelled out but the illegality goes to what everybody knew about what they were doing with the russians during the campaign. that is what this information and this guilty plea cignaify. >> when you read that tweet by the president -- i fired michael flynn because he lied to the vice president mike pence and the fbi. why is he the fbi part so

critical to the in all this? >> the next day he meets with james comey and asked comey to drop the whole matter, to let it go. it's significant because it goes to his corrupt intent, which is a critical element of obstruction of justice. that is, he had to do it, ask flynn to dop it for an improper purpose. here it's obvious. the improper purpose was that he knows flynn knows everything about the conspiracy between the russian government and the campaign. you can't get much better than that. >> let me ask you about the president's tweets from today, the first one claiming that james comey is lying when he says trump pressured him to drop the flynn investigation. is it just a he said/he said situation here or does comey have anything that's actually going to corroborate the claim because we know that the two men met privately, there was no one else in the room. comey took a lot of detailed notes but at the end of the day, is it going to come down to he said versus he said?

>> it is a he said versus he said situation. when you have to adjudicate that situation of who's telling the truth. on james comey side you have someone who -- whatever your criticisms of him and i've had a lot over the years, he's someone with a reputation for honesty and when he left the meeting with the president, he went right away and wrote a memo detailing word for word what the president said to him using quotes around these key terms what the president said to him. he then briefed people he worked with at the fbi on those conversations, he kept very detailed notes and those contemporaneous notes. on the other hand, you have a president who has a reputation for lying, exaggerating and not telling the truth about a number of things but from everything -- we could go down a long list here. when you look at the balance on both sides of the ledger, i don't think many people who are looking at this fairly would have much doubt about who's telling the truth and who's not.

>> let me ask you about the president's tweets, rick, this morning, one in particular going after the fbi on its investigation of hillary clinton. saying its reputation was in tatters which obviously you can expect drew quite a strong reaction including former attorney general erik holder who defended the bureau from his time there at d.o.j. what is this focus on the fbi achieve for the president? try toe get in his head for a moment and tell us what this achieves? >> it's triflism. he's trying to solidify the base who believes that the former administration was corrupt. the danger, when you start undermining institutions like justice and too many people start to believe that the systems are corrupt, they begin to collapse on themselves. he does that not only with justice and the press whose reporting about it all. what i'm still confused about is what the underlying charge that comey is going after might be?

i'm not sure what it is. is the russians improperly or illegally contributed to the president campaign, the penalty would amount to a slap on the wrist. collusion is not a crime. he doesn't want anybody to undermine his election which is ironic because he goes around and undermines the very institutions that got him elected. >> we can expect trump to grow more dangerous and desperate in his distractions as he hears mueller's foot steps. in his tweets today, trump jumped on the story that mueller reassigned an agent back over the summer over some anti-trump tweets that that agent had put out. could you see president trump using that as a pretext to remove mueller going forward? >> well, i could see trump doing virtually anything because what we've seen so far is that he will do that.

it would be such an earthquake, such a cataclysmic event that it seems so exceedingly unlikely and the progress that mueller has made so far essentially ins lats himself from that. i think more likely what's happening here is trump knows whatever legal jeopardy he and his people are in and he's choosing to try to draw a line and make this a political argument at this fairly early stage in the process and he will convince a third of the nation to stick with him no matter what. rick is right. this has a terrible effect on the rule of law and how we view things but i think as a political matter that means two-thirds of the country are not going to buy these attacks on the fbi, attacks on the justice department, the previous attacks on the courts. so ultimately that's not going to get him out of trouble. >> sarah, let me ask you. this could have ended up on the positive note for the president

this week particular about his tax win. you wrote about the tax win was overshadowed by flynn's plea deal. the president doesn't seem to be helping his cause. he's contributing to the fact that the flynn plea deal continues to be the news driver with his tweets. he's tweeting about everything to do with the flynn deal but about his tax win? >> exactly. this was actually setting aside the flynn plea guilty plea. there was actually a lot of successes for the president. he won a legal battle for the control of cfpb and yet we're still talking about russia, we're still talking about his focus on the case because he continues to talk about it. the white house has lawyered ty cobb put out a pretty reasonable statement that said we fired mike flynn for the same lie that he told the fbi agent. so we're absolved from the gilt and yet president trump continued throughout the weekend to bring up the situation to

pick a fight with his own fbi and made the situation worse played up the drama surrounding it. >> i'm going to ask all of you to stay with me. we've got a lot more to break down. we're just getting started here. straight ahead, the man at the center of the plea deal that has led to this twitter hurricane from president trump, what michael flynn may know and who should be worried the most. and jared kushner makes his first appearance since the flynn news at an event. it was about middle east peace but after what's happened can he really be considered an honest broker in the region. i'm going to talk to former israeli prime minister live on the program. stay with us. 1,200 workers are starting their day building on over a hundred years of heritage, craftsmanship and innovation. today we're bringing you america's number one shave at lower prices every day. putting money back in the pockets of millions of americans. as one of those workers, i'm proud to bring you gillette quality for less, because nobody can beat the men and women of gillette.

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as we've been reporting. michael flynn's guilty plea could have wide ranging implications. he was considered by many to be one of the greatest intelligence officers of his generation and is now known for his role in an international political scandal. you can tune in tonight to headliners. michael flynn right here on msnbc. it starts tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern. here's a preview for you. >> president trump's former national security adviser michael flynn has just pleaded guilty to a charge of lying to the fbi. >> michael flynn at one time donald trump's most loyal foreign policy adviser now pledging full cooperation with the president's antagonist, robert mueller. today's news may change the

calculus for the president legally and politically. >> he has information about president trump, he has information about the former campaign manager paul manafort, maybe about jared kushner and donald trump jr. >> a former lieutenant general. >> i thought to myself, this is the best intel officer i ever met. >> who could now implicate his commander-in-chief in the russia investigation. >> you joined donald trump in these intelligence briefings. you didn't learn from any of these briefings that it was russia? >> those issues did not come up and that's the extent of what i can talk about. >> this is the first time that this investigation has gone into the white house. >> from insurgent battlefield to political mindfield, the complicated journey of michael flynn. >> he goes from the pinnacle of helping to defeat our enemy now he's mired in this malstorm that we doesn't know how it's going to end.

>> you don't want to miss that tonight. that's headliners. you can watch the full peshl on sunday night here at 9:00 p.m. eastern. >> let's bring in our panel once again to talk about the flynn plea deal. good to have all of you back with us. so nick, let me ask you about one of the talking points that you hear from trump supporters and that is the fact that michael flynn admitted lying to the fbi, talking about sanctions with russia, that seems to be a big issue and obviously there's a lot of questions as to what he knew, what k.t. mcfarland was egging him on to discuss with the russian embassy. some of this is considered to be a violation of the logan act, in the sense you have a private citizen at the time who is trying to shape or conduct u.s. foreign policy on behalf of the u.s. government with a foreign official but others are saying, that's what a national -- incoming national security

adviser is expected to do, he's supposed to start to lay the ground work for his job when he gets into the office. >> this whole business about the logan act is as i said is a red herring. it's got nothing to do with this. if you look at the plea and what he aloe cuted too the materiality of the false statement has to do with the connection to the coordination and conspiracy between russia and trump campaign. that leaves an open question. what is it about what flynn was doing during those conversations with kislyak that related to what happened before during the campaign. >> it almost makes you wonder why didn't he just say, of course i was having calls with the russia because of the fact that i am the incoming national security adviser. no one's ever been prosecuted for the logan act? >> that's right. and they were the incoming administration. >> they would have been given leeway. >> the aloe cushion doesn't say anything about the logan act it has to do with the conspiracy with russia and the campaign,

which is an extremely serious crime because you've got computer hacking, you've got defrauding the u.s. government, you've got mail fraud, wire fraud, you've got all kinds of possible serious felonies. what is left unsaid in this flynn deal is exactly what flynn has told them about what was done between the russians and the campaign. that's the part we're waiting for. >> i want you to listen to this sound byte from senator feinstein today on michael flynn. >> i do not believe that general flynn was a rogue agent. i think he had to have been directed. now whether the special counsel can find that evidence or not, whether we can, i don't know yet. but i see that that's where this is going. >> we know that jared kushner was one of those people allegedly directing flynn's contact with the russians. is he likely a target of mueller's investigation by now you think? >> i don't know if he's a target. usually the target is a formal

legal term that means that the government has decided they're going to indict you. he's definitely a subject of the investigation in the same way that the president is. there are a couple ways to look at flynn's plea deal and read the tea leaves. one is to look at the statement of offense and these conversations we've been talking about and try to follow those bread crumbs about who was he was talking to. the other way is to think of all the other things he's told bob mueller that didn't go into that statement. it's very unlikely that bob mueller would have put the most important pieces of information out in the public before he's had a chance to talk to other witnesses. for flynn to have gotten the deal that he got with all of the legal jeopardy he faces, the only way you do that is not by trading down. he was a very senior member of that organization. mike flynn isn't going to get a good deal by putting someone like george papadopoulos in jail. he gets a good deal by giving up information about a very small group of people, the president, vice president, jared kushner

and donald trump jr. that's about it. >> that's a good point. do you see him at all offering a pardon for flynn at some point? >> it's hard to know. they've already distanced themselves. he only worked there 25 days. you saw what cobb had said and so it's hard to know. it's hard to know mostly because we don't know what donald trump will do. it's certainly within his constitutional authority to pardon him but he'd be foolish to do it now. >> dana the president's lawyers trying to downplay the president's connection with trump. he was only a national security adviser for 25 days but his ties to trump are deeper. they run all the way to the convention. he was an early supporter of president trump during the campaign. >> yeah, i don't think that's going to fly. they did the same thing with papadopoulos, at least that made sense when he'd only met with

the president once, was a relatively minor figure. this is a guy who's out there speaking for the whole world to see at the convention, a very high level guile and remember that trump himself was reluctant to fire him in the first place and continued to say nice things about him after the fact and as we know tried to pressure comey not to investigate him. so clearly trump himself sees this man as a major figure and that's why we're seeing this sort of freak out in the twitter stream. >> i wonder if they'll be any political ramifications if he does pardon michael flynn. thank you very much for joining me. rick and sarah i'm going to ask you to stay with us. a new name front and center after the flynn plea deal, k.t. mcfarland, who is she? and why is she now the focus? outrage from near and far over the president's anti-muslim

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headlines in the u.s. tonight the global fallout continues from president trump's retweeting of anti-muslim videos from an account belonging to a uk based hate group. >> by sharing it, he is either a racist, incompetent or unthinking or all three. >> the president was stupid in what he did. >> we cannot simply roll out a red carpet and give a platform for the president of the united states to also sew discord in our communities. >> action is needed now. not a slap on the wrist. cancel the state visit. united in their outrage, a rare show of solidarity, uk lawmakers including london mayor calling for a ban on president trump after he shared these fote videos posted by britain first. british prime minister theresa may also criticize the

president's action but she remained firm on her decision to invite the president to the uk. >> i'm clear that the retweeting was a wrong thing. a state visit has been extended and accepted. >> michelle due berry agreeing it's not worth it for london to ruin a century's old relationship with washington. >> he is the president of the united states. we need particularly post brexit a relationship with the united states. so i don't think we should be stopping that state visit. >> still others not so quick to give the commander-in-chief a free pass. an op ed appearing in israel's trump's tweets threaten british muslims like me and struggles against isis recruiters. full blown diplomatic crisis evident in this dramatic headline appearing in skoetland's daily record. hate amonger trump embraces chaos as the center of politics is engulfed in flames.

>> not so, it's all much ado about nothing. john wright writing about the nauseati nauseating hip pock country of liberal anger at trump retweets. that's we said, they said for this week. and now to yk making a rare public appearance in washington today. an annual conference on middle east politics. kushner out for the first time since news broke of the michael flynn plea deal. despite being in the middle of several overlapping controversies, the white houses wasn't questioned about the biggest news story but asked about the media scrutiny surrounding him and ivanka. >> i don't let it bother me. there are people who are good at dealing with the media. my focus is on the objectives and we'll stay focused on the

different missions. we're here to serve the country and we'll just keep going. what i am confident is that when our service is done, we'll look back and we won't say there was a bad story on this or that, we'll look back and say did we spend every minute we could to push as hard as we could on the issues we cared about to make as big of an impact as possible. >> to talk more about u.s. peace initiatives. thank you for joining us. i want to start with the news of the day coming out. do you think the flynn plea deal in which jared kushner was revealed to play a central role in trying to stop the vote at the united nations security council that was critical of israel makes it effectively for kushner to be seen as on honest broker here to middle east peace? >> i don't think so. a person cannot change his past

and we are learning the hard way these very days that he cannot even kind of contour the timing of anything coming to the republic. i don't think that this should interrupt the real issues is what kind of plan if they will put on the table on behalf of the president in the coming several weeks or few months. the result will be set by the sincerity and the work that had been done, i hope it will end up with something substantial. >> there were tensions between on the decision that was expected this week on whether the trump administration willful fill a campaign promise to declare jerusalem as the capital of israel and move obviously not recognize the international and move the u.s. embassy there. a palestinian authority met with jared kushner on friday and

reportedly said that that would effectively end the peace process. is the symbolism of that move, you think, worth the danger to peace and stability in the region? >> it can be judged only by the details which i'm not familiar with. for me as an israeli, all israelis right and left would expect that israel as a matter of fact will be accepted by all, as the capital of israel and we accept not just the american embassies but all embassies. i don't think it should kill the potential breakthrough in a peace process. i think that much of it is a political maneuvering not to let it pass without any response. i think that no one is talking now about moving the embassy which we wish to see. only about trump's statement, which basically declares the obvious. i think that it's only part of

negotiation but i hope i'm not wrong. >> sir, i know you've been involved in many high level negotiations obviously in your time in government. there are some reports that the secretary of state rex tillerson has somewhat been marralized in this process. and, in fact, as we know, jared kushner and his team are really driving these negotiations. are you at all concerned by that, that the state department is not playing a bigger role in negotiating between the israelis and the palestinians? >> it's up to the president, up to the administration. i don't think that any israeli, former prime minister or sitting prime minister can dictate to the administration how to work. it is not totally unprecedented that certain sensitive steps. look at the first stages of deal with iran. it was done far from the eye of the -- at least the machinery of the state department probably, the secretary himself knew about

it. i cannot pass the judgment. it's a matter of trust in the top levels of your foreign affairs mechanism. >> let me ask you about your assessment about what with you've heard about the first year of the trump administration in trying to jump start the peace talks. we've really seen very little come out publicly. what is your assessment of how it's gone so far? >> what i know and observe is that both jared kushner met with almost any possible leading player in the region, greenblatt, jason greenblatt met with almost any operational level and of course the leaders themselves but any working level official in any capital in the middle east, including israel and with the palestinians and they have enough information now. now the question is, to what extent the political behind it to push it and illustration of some kind of wishes about how to

have a breakthrough that we'll be giving with yield nothing. nothing because they both will contemplate the steps and responses based on the idea that it's going to fail, it failed with the previous two presidents. they're experts on starting the fight for the blame game at the very beginning of any organization. it's only a de facto state with clear outline of american principles and readiness to follow on in any possible way to make it happen. that's the only way. i'm not sure that this political reel is due. >> let me ask you if i can two questions. what about your personal political future? are you making a return to israeli politics in either creating a new political party in israel? why has the left in israel which you at one point represented at

somewhat been decimated by the right in israeli politics and what's in cards for you personally? >> i'm israeli citizen. our government is a free elected government. it's my government. i don't like it. i don't like its policies. i think it's risking israel in a very explicit way. the real agenda of this government is one state, namely creeping anex-ation of the west bank and we have a huge debate whether these isolated settlements about 100 of them, how they torpedo any option from the palestinian. the neighbors in jerusalem which contain 80% of the settlers, hundreds of thousands of people are all part of israeli judgment in any future -- responsibility

for security. >> can i ask you really quickly, to that effective and i wrote -- you wrote the article or the op ed in the "the new york times" saying you want to save israel from its government. what is it that the international community can do to put pressure on israel, to do what you're asking for which is to withdraw those settlements? >> i'm not calling for the pressure from outside. i'm calling for the israeli public to wake up and see that we are heading into the abyss. and that we're to take ourself in our hands and act in a see this government, right wing government, is insulting directly the supreme court, the civil society the free media. this is something unheard of and should be stopped by the israeli public. what we need from the world is a clear voice. >> this is a danger for the

state of israel. former prime minister, thank you very much for joining us this sunday. >> thank you for having me. we want to talk about more about jared kushner and flynn plea deal and the implications for it as well as on the foreign policy side of things. steve clemons, and yoijoining m from paris, ned price from washington. gentlemen, great to have both of you. ned, let me begin with you and talk about kushner's role in allegedly directing flynn to call russia for help in what we were just talking about which is blocking this u.n. resolution that was opposed by the incoming trump administration, it was ultimately unsuccessful because the resolution eventually passed after a one day delay. why was it so important for the trump administration you think to try to block that u.n. vote? >> the trump administration was under great pressure from the israeli government, including phone calls from prime minister

netanyahu of israel to president-elect donald trump. it's interesting we're talking about this today because we learned another detail about jared kushner. he apparently also forgot to list on his security clearance document the fact that he was on the board of a foundation that funded an illegal israeli settlement or at least it was considered illegal under electrical law. there was an ideological affinity but the trump team was also getting great pressure from the israeli government. one final point here, i think it's been forgotten that president-elect trump himself actually spoke with egyptian president the day the resolution was supposed to be tabled at the u.n. security council only for the egyptians to then pull it back and to delay the vote for a day. i think that clearly shows it was not just jared kushner but president-elect trump himself who was very much involved in this effort. >> steve, let me ask you quickly. do you think it's a fair assessment because the president

was saying michael flynn even though didn't direct him to reach out to the russians, he was doing something that he should be doing, making contacts and begin laying the ground work for the incoming administration's foreign policy. is that a fair assessment? >> i think this is one of the big mysteries. i think it is a fair assessment that at least donald trump early on said that both jared kushner and michael flynn had responsibilities of interacting with those governments reaching out to them. i remember very well when abe was flying over as ned price just laid out the calls coming in from netanyahu. everyone was racing to get the private phone numbers of michael flynn and jared kushner. the question is why was there so much lying about this? the part of it was in staggeringly, shocking e-mails that involve people like k.t. mcfarland, tom bossert who's now the president's homeland security adviser is there was an

awareness of the russia issue, a concern about being -- seeing a campaign charging the trump campaign with an illegitimate election so there was this tension right up front from trying to disavow the various things that donald trump may have, in fact, told mike flynn to do. >> let me pick up on that real quick. k.t. mcfarland, what's her role? >> she's become a central figure especially in recent days because the statement of the offense that bob mueller's team put out listed her as the transition official who provided guidance to mike flynn that he should weigh in with ambassador kislyak on russia's ponce to the sanctions. what's especially interesting about that is that mcfarland was michael flynn's deputy. she was the incoming deputy national security adviser. michael flynn was the national security adviser designee. she would not give orders to her

boss. the question then becomes, who was actually providing that guidance, was it someone like jared kushner or was it someone like president-elect donald trump who then asked k.t. mcfarland to direct michael flynn to do that. >> all right. i appreciate you staying up late for us in paris. you are in a nice city. i'm not feeling too bad for you for staying up late. wondering why roy moore is still holding on to a lead despite accusations of sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl? some new polling may have the answers for you. stay with us. i've always had that issue with the seeds getting under my denture. super poligrip free. it creates a seal of the dentures in my mouth. even well fitting dentures let in food particles just a few dabs of super poligrip free is clinically proven to seal out more food particles so you're more comfortable and confident while you eat. super poligrip free made even the kiwi an enjoyable experience

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time now for the global checkup. a look of stories making headlines around the world and we begin with news out of north korea where kim jong-un praised workers at a tire making factory. and in vatican city, pope francis addressing a crowd said he recalled the suffering and noble faces of the rohingya refugees. the pope was criticized for not being more vocal when he was in myanmar. germany police turned water cannons outside a conference by the adf, german's party, several were injured in clashes with police.

>> that's our global check up. ♪ put a little love in your heart.♪ ♪ you'll see it's getting late, oh please don't hesitate...♪ ♪ put a little love in your heart.♪ ♪ in your heart... ♪ in your heart... ♪ in your heart... ♪ in your heart. (vo) going on now, our subaru share the love event will have donated over one hundred fifteen million dollars to those in need.

welcome back. alabama special election just nine days away and a new poll

finds roy moore leading democratic challenger doug jones 39% to jones' 43%. the same poll shows 71% of alabama republicans say the allegations against roy moore believe it north are false. and the majority believes that democrats and the media are fuelling those allegations. joining me is josh moon, alabama political reporter and back with us once again sarah westwood, and rick tyler, republican strategist and msnbc political analyst. josh, let me begin with you. obviously, the polls are meant to be accurate, meant to be somewhat scientific. does the polling show moore with a slight lead, seem right to you on the ground in alabama or do you have a different sense on where things stand? i'm not trying to suggest that your polling -- personal polling is inaccurate. but anecdotically what are you hearing? >> i would say that it's pretty -- it's pretty close. you know? i have scored it basically neck and neck for the last few weeks and i think that's where it is.

i mean, i think roy moore is going to win the thing because that's who we are here. but i think that -- >> what -- when you say that's who we are here. >> well, you read the stats there, 71% don't believe it. well, what are you talking about with these people? so i mean, this is who we are. we disbelieve the facts and we believe this man who is essentially leading the cult at this point. >> sarah, what is your reaction to that? you know, as josh was saying there, you know, the people down there, 71% believe this is is being fueled by the media and it's not accurate. you know, you heard roy moore blame the lesbian, gays and bisexuals on this saying it's a conspiracy. >> i think what's important to keep in mind is that to alabama voters roy moore is someone that they have known for years as evangelical, as someone who is very religious. so while he may be defined by the sex scandal on the national stage, alabama voters most of them had already had an opinion formed of roy moore before the sex scandal broke.

it's not the most recognizable aspect of the candidacy and sort of the same reason that we saw the "access hollywood" tape do less damage to trump than a lot of folks thought it would. it was because donald trump was so well known for so many years that he was unable to be defined by the "access hollywood" tape. and it is just came one more data point about the trump that we had all known for years and years. now that the shock value of the allegations have worn off, i think you're so -- seeing the race start to stabilize. >> so the president not going to alabama before the election but he's doing something interesting, he's go to pensacola, florida, which is as close as you get without stepping foot into alabama. understand they share the same television markets so it will be broadcast and covered live in mobile. what does that say in terms of how much it will help roy moore? >> i think it will help and you're right. they do share that same market there. and it will stretch into the area where roy moore -- it's a strong hold in that particular area. he needs the people to really turn out. so that'll help him there.

you know, but it is interesting that trump's doing that. i think that speaks to the polling being so close here. that they can't really rely on roy moore taking this lead. i think he's been very cautious and trying to help where he can, but not putting too many eggs in this roy moore basket like he did with luther strange. >> how forceful do you think trump will be on that visit? what are the political risks for him? making that trip and going full throttle behind roy moore? >> well, you can be sure if he goes full throttle for roy moore that he believes the polling and that roy moore is going to win and he'll been oa winning side. that's all that matters to him. i would caution people on the polling. not a lot of people -- not a lot of pollsters poll in alabama. they don't have experience polling in alabama. lmc is polling in alabama around they have been fairly accurate. they're the ones who have roy moore ahead comfortably. remember this is a special election occurring between thanksgiving an christmas, very unusual. the lmc poll only used land

lines, and they have the older votes. they're the ones most likely to vote on that date, but we never expected donald trump to win michigan, pennsylvania -- >> and he did. >> so who knows? >> all right. josh moon, sarah westwood and rick tyler. we'll talk more about this in the coming weeks as well. that'll do it for this week. join me next sunday at 5:00 p.m. to break down the major stories of the week. both internationally and domestically. you can reach out to me on social media. be sure to join kasie hunt at 7:00 for kasie d.c. and then watch "headlines, michael flynn" an in depth look at the man at the center of the russia investigation. but first up, it's "meet the press." ( ♪ ) when it comes to holiday shopping, my wife loves style, my son is all about technology and my daughter? she just loves horses. don't you just love one-stop shopping?

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this sunday, flynn flips. now what? michael flynn pleads guilty to lying to the fbi, becoming robert mueller's star witness and moving the russia investigation inside the white house. president trump insists he's not worried. >> what has been shown is no collusion, no collusion. there's been absolutely no collusion. >> but he's already distancing himself from flynn. distancing >> we'll see what happens. plus, republican senators celebrate passing their tax plan. >> well, this is a great day for the country. >> but what's in it?