ruhle." >> that brings us to an end. i'm al have i velshi. i'll see you back here at 3:00 p.m. eastern. >> we hand off to andrea mitchell for "andrea mitchell reports." >> stand by his man. president trump defends his former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi, trying to turn it into a false claim against hillary clinton. >> i sal say this, hillary clinton lied many times to the fbi. nothing happened to her. flynn lied and they destroyed his life. think it's a shame. >> tale of the tweet. the president's lawyer says he wrote the president's controversial tweet this weekend which some call evidence of obstruction of justice. >> i see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of director comey, and it is my leaf that that is directly because he did not agree to lift

the cloud of the russia investigation. that's obstruction of justice. >> and land rush. president trump arriving in utah today to announce a major cutback in federally protected lands. another reversal of obama policy. >> by lifting those protections, those lands and all of their treasures within them, the natural wonders and sacred sites will now be open top private gain. >> that is a false narrative that's been dictated by the environmental community. >> and good day. i'm andrea mitch in washington. president trump today expressed sympathy for convicted felon michael flynn who is likely special counsel robert mueller's star witness. this after the president stirred controversy by tweeting this weekend that flynn was also fired for lying to the fbi. if the president knew that at that time that he was raising questions of possible obstruction because he subsequently pressured jim comey

his intelligence officials and republican senators all to end the mueller investigation into russia. president trump's lawyer john dowd trying to take the hit telling nbc news it was the first and last tweet he will write for the president. this morning another story. white house officials saying for the first time that the president's legal team plays a key role in writing his tweets. >> john dowd said over the weekend he tweeted for the president. does that is happen a lot where other people tweet for the president? >> yeah, well, yes, in terms of the lawyers, the lawyers are the ones that understand how to put those tweets together. >> joining me now white house correspondent kristen welker and nbc national political reporter carroll lee. kristin, first to you. let's go through what the personal lawyer john dowd said about that tweet, the implications of that tweet and whether it's credible that he wrote that tweet and perhaps more? >> reporter: well, look, john

dowd insists he did write the tweet in question. and in conversations that i had with him over the weekend, he said that essentially he was putting together two thoughts, one that the president was aware that michael flynn had lied to his vice president and that's why he fired him but then also, of course, the subsequent revelation that he lied to the fbi. so john dowd trying to take responsibility for that. but of course, it did raise questions over the weekend about possible obstruction. john dowd saying look, he dictated that tweet to dan skoe vin know, a social media coordinator. i spoke with one white house official who said in reality the only people who are actually putting in words into the president's twitter account are the president and dan sca vin know. to kellyanne's point, based on my reporting while it's possible that the lawyers may be helping to add words and thoughts, the idea here is that typically it comes from the president and from his social media director.

andrea, what's interesting is the talking point and the narrative and strategy that has come out this morning from john dowd who now says that these questions about obstructioning are absurd. he says because the president can't be accused of obstruction because he's the chief law enforcement officer essentially. that's what the john dowd is arguing. he's allowed to raise these questions in a legal setting. that is going to be a highly controversial line of argument but it's one that the president's attorneys are sticking to today. then as you heard, the president robustly defending his form err national security advicer. >> and let me just, carroll lee, play lindsey graham on "face the nation" after that tweet. >> there's an ongoing criminal investigation. comey may be part of it. the tweeting comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril, i would be careful if i were you, mr. president. i'd watch this. >> carroll, first of all, we'll

get in a bit to the whole question of whether a president can be accused with obstruction of justice. there's a debatable question as to whether a president can be indict while in office, but no one has ever to my knowledge ever suggested that the president could not be accused of obstruction of justice that was i think one of the first articles of impeachment against nixon. that said, what about the president and all of this suggestion that hillary clinton first of all lied to the fbi, something she was never charged with would have been had she, but the whole question of his tweeting about this. >> yeah, andrea, i think lindsey graham spoke for a lot of republicans when he was saying that. and frankly, for a lot of people in the white house who get frustrated with some of the president's tweets. you know, in terms of the president's remarks as he was leaving today on the south lawn,

you know, he -- there's no evidence he offered no evidence, nobody on his team has offered any evidence that hillary clinton lied to the fbi. we've seen this as a tactic that he takes when he feels cornered where he'll push back by trying to shift the focus on to secretary clinton. he's clearly doing that again. you know, he also said that michael flynn is -- ruined his life, that he lied to the fbi. well, you know, that kind of ignores a bunch of other elements which are that the michael flynn pleaded to lie together fbi because clearly, robert mueller had much more significant potential charges to bring against him. so far his life wasn't ruined for simply lying to the fbi. but it was also very interesting as you mentioned that the president defended michael flynn once again calling him a good man. but i think the big question coming out of all of this is

when the president knew that michael flynn lied to the fbi. >> and thanks to carroll and to kristin, joining me now nbc national security contribute ker frank fa glee zee. and justice and security analyst matt miller, former chief spokesman for attorney general eric holder. matt, the whole question of whether the president can be accuses of obstruction of justice, how can john dowd say that that can't even be leveled against a president of the united states? >> it is a really dangerous argument for the president's legal team to make. as you pointed out, there is this ongoing debate what the remedy for obstruction of justice would be. can the president be indicted while he's in office or is that a question left to congress? that is an open and ongoing debate. there's not been much debate whether the president himself is above the law. that's the argument you see dowd making saying whether the president committed these acts or not, and by the way, the fact

that they appear to be willing to cede these facts that he did take actions to shut down the investigation, even if so, that is not obstruction of justice is a dangerous argument for this instance and because if the president cannot obstruct justice in blocking this investigation, it means he can fire bob mueller. there's nothing that be done about it. it's a troubling thing for them to argue. >> i can see them arguing what's happened so far doesn't amount to obstruction of justice. they have every right to make that argument. to argue he can never be accused of obstruction because he's president makes no sense. >> it says the president is above the law. that is the argument they're making. it's an argument that congress rejected when had in the first articles of impeachment for nixon, that was the first article of impeachment. it will be a larger strategy when they try to say the president is the chief law enforcement officer. he took actions because he was trying to balance his responsibilities as the chief

law enforcement officer with, for example, his need to conduct foreign policy. you might see them make the argument they had to shut down this investigation because it was impeding his ability make deals on behalf of the united states with russia. i think that's where they're going to go. >> frank, you spent a good part of your career with the fbi and i want to ask you about the fact that one -- well actually two fbi agents very highly specialized an agents who were on the team last summer were accused of texting each other with anti-trump texts. and were immediate lit dismissed or sent back to another part of the fbi. taken off the case. this has given obviously the trump team a pretty strong weapon, and the president now tweeting i had to fire general flynn because he lied to the vice president and the fbi. he's pled guilty to those lies. in addition to that, first tweet we were talking about he tweeted after years of comey with the

phony and dishonest clinton investigation and more, running the fbi, its reputation is in tatters. worst in history but fear not, we will bring it back to greatness. so a series of tweets about the fbi. first of all, how has that been taken within the agency? >> you know, andrea, carl sandburg once said if the facts are against you, argue the law. if the law is against you, argue the facts. if the facts and the law are against you, pound the table and yell like hell. and that's exactly what we're seeing the president doing. he's starting to yell like hell because the facts and law are beginning to show they're against him. look, for a part of my career, i was in charge of an internal affairs unit in the office of professional responsibility at fbi headquarters. i can tell you the fbi is extremely scrupulous and hard on its personnel with regard to any appearance of impropriety. what happened here is what you just said. two work colleagues are texting

each other with political leaning comments in an abundance of caution, they were removed from the special counsel investigation just to preserve the credibility of the case. that's it. that's what's happened. any argument is the fbi's reputation is in tatters is a distractions technique by someone who believes he's in trouble. >> frank, how damaging is this though to mueller's reputation. >> is this becoming politicized, weaponized by the president and his team? >> andrea, i think this confirms mueller's reputation as pristine. he will not tolerate any appearance of impropriety on his team. he didn't have to remove these agencies for what and i would discuss over a salad at lunch. he remove them to ensure there's no appearance of impropriety here. >> matt, eric holder weighed in in, as well. it's not just democrats weighing in. there's a strong cohesion among

fbi agents, past, present, as well. >> yeah, one of the things you've seen from this president from the beginning of this administration is this consistent attacks on law enforcement on the fbi, on the justice department because he's seeing this is the one agency supposed to have some degree of independence from the white house, is not supposed to take direction from the white house and he rebes against that. you see bipartisan pushback from former department of justice officials like my former boss eric holder standing up and saying these attacks on the agency are inappropriate. you should stop them. the people we haven't heard push back against the president ever to any of these attacks are the attorney general jeff sessions and deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. they sat quietly while the president attacks career law enforcement officials doing their job every day and never once stood up and protected them against his attacks. >> you're suggesting they should be. >> they absolutely should have. >> frank, thank you so much. matt miller thank you.

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republicans today are fresh off of a high drama late night senate vote, a successful vote for them pushing through their tax cut bill. they're now facing a final hurdle scrambling to reconcile the house and senate bills before their christmas deadline. they seem to have the votes. democrats are outraged about the senate bill which passed look party lines in the early hours saturday morning saying it was riddled with handwritten sometimes barely legible margin notes. >> i just got the tax bill 25 minutes ago. this is the tax bill. see how thick it is? this is what it looks like.

no, let's look at the bill. this is what it really looks like. i want you to take a look at this, folks. this is your government at work. here's the bill as it's written. here's the modifications that are in it. >> republicans think that they can cram through a tax bill that will affect every family in america. that will touch every business in america. they're sending around their edits as we speak. edits. >> and joining me is garrett haake on capitol hill. i hope you've got good eye glasses today. and maya macguineas, president of the committee for responsible government budget. garrett, what's the procedure now? there's supposed to be a vote on the house side tonight. then they go to conference. you've been skeptical in this can be quickly ironed out in conference. senate republicans telling me it can be. >> white house officials won't be involved in the conference committee, of course. anytime anyone off the hill tells you how easy something

will be to get done, particularly in the senate i think it's wise to look at that skeptically. tonight we'll see the first vote on this. the house will vote to take this bill to conference. they'll vote to select their conference committee members. the senate will do the same a little bit later in the week. then they'll begin work officially going on behind the scenes already to harmonize these two bills to try to bring them together on points both philosophical. how many tax bracks will we have for individuals and in terms of the money aspect of this, how do we afford this $1.5 trillion? how do we keep this bill below that cost. the house was sort of knowledgeable that the senate rules would be tight when they wrote this bill but there are a lot of kinks to get worked out in a relatively short time frame with, by the way, this government funding fight that's going to be going on simultaneously. they have to have a continuing resolution. they have to write a collect 0 keep the government open by the end of this week, too. a lot of moving parts happening

at the same time, andrea. >> i want to break down the deficit implications with maya in a seconds. but i wanted to fact check mitch mcconnell saying there had been tons of hearings on this. i cannot recall a single finance committee hearing on this bill. >> no, i mean, they will point to the senate markup of this bill saying that this was -- that is sort of the process for this particular bill. and the fact that largely, this is sort of a bill gobbled together of some fairly standard republican tax policy issues over time. but the idea that this particular bill was debated in open sun light over weeks or months is just not accurate. >> now to the whole question of economic growth. so-called dynamic scoring we used to call the rosy scenario when we talked about budgets. maya, let's talk about deficits. a trillion and a half and according to joint tax committee, it could get down to a trillion if there's enough growth. that's the best estimate,

conservative estimate from the joint tax committee. what is your own projection? >> first, i'm glad to talk about deficits because it's one of the discussions just left completely out of this entire tax reform debate. the whole purpose of refor to help grow the economy in a way that would generate more revenues and make the debt better. they pulled way back from that as a goal. now we're talking about how much is this going to make the debt worse. the joint tax committee which is very credible, estimates that we're going to add another trillion dollars to the debt after economic growth. and i believe dynamic scoring has an important role. we want to adopt bolss that will grow the economy more and want to know which parts of reform will increase growth. the problem is people reject it out of hand, not just the jointtach committee score but the many scores out there that showed how much this would add to the debt and jumped on to magic thinking saying this would pay for itself whether he there was not a single credible score

that would say that is true. i worry that undermines the use of real numbers and facts which are so important in guiding good policy decisions. >> and nick mulvaney, omb director telling me in an interview three weeks ago, this is gaming the system to try to keep the overall number under the budget rules so that the so-called bird rule so we only needed 50 votes and not 60 votes. he says and they all acknowledge that the good gimme parts of this, the dessert, if you will which is tax cuts for some people in the middle class, would end up being extended not being allowed to expire. so the real deficit implication is 2.2 trillion. speaking of magical thinking, let's play a little bit of susan collins off of "meet the press." >> economic growth produces more revenue and that will help to offset this tax cut and actually lower the debt. if you take the cb o's formula

and apply it, just .4 of 1% increase in the gdp, generates revenues of a trillion dollars a trillion dollars even the joint committee on taxation has projected that the tax bill would stimulate the economy to produce hundreds of billions of additional revenue. >> and she then cited a number of republican economists larry lindsay and gleb hubbard and dennis. your response to that. >> unfortunately, there was some mixing around with the numbers right there because she's absolutely right that .4 of a percent of gdp growth on top of what we would have would generate a trillion in revenues that would help fill in the gap. however, all of the scores of this bill show we would falwell short of that in terms of sustained growth. the estimate is.08, not.4,

but.08 which is a tiny fraction of the growth we need. if somebody dug into the numbers she's admitting this is going to add to the debt at a type when it is the highest it has been since we came out of world war ii. the republicans came into office saying i want to balance the budget, deal with the debt, control spending of which they're doing nothing so far and have tax reform that is revenue neutral. it is not just disappointing, it is troubling for the future fiscal health of the country, this huge shift in policies away from offsetting the cost of things, trying to truly grow the economy and make our debt better instead of worse. this is tax reform bill has gone through so many pretend claims, it's going to be very hard to get it back on track and to do the next steps we have to do in all this. we do have reform entitlements. but once there's been a huge tax cut passed, i don't think there will be the bipartisan will to do what we need to do on entitlements. >> actually some republicans are saying we will be able to do

that but they'll have less money to spread around. so it will be deeper cuts in medicare. >> they don't want to do it on their own and didn't include it in the budget. they want democrats to help them but democrats are going to alienated cut out of the budget process on tax reform. why would they help on the hard part of entitlement reform? this should have been done as a grand bargain where everything is on the table and both parties work together. we have to address the fiscal situation. pretending it's not there and making it worst is not going to fix any of the big threats we have. >> maya, thank you very much. the committee for responsible federal budget and garrett haake, another late night on the hill today. come up, russia responding. what the kremlin is saying today about michael flynn and his influence on their response to increase sanctions. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. (avo) when you have type 2 diabetes, you manage your a1c,

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the kremlin today is denying that it conspired with michael flynn saying that russian president vladimir putin decided on his own not to retaliate responding to u.s. sanctions last year for meddling in election and it had nothing to do with the former national security's adviser request to the russian adviser. peskov saying flynn could not ask figure from kislyak and any request conveyed to putin is

nonsense. >> joining me is michael mcfaul, also an nbc contributor happily. mike, is it at all credible that the russian ambassador would hear from the incoming national security adviser and not pass that information directly to the kremlin? >> well, directly, i can't say for sure because i know how their system works, but obviously, a meeting with national -- the future national security adviser michael flynn with ambassador kislyak would be highly valuable information that ambassador kislyak most certainly would have passed on. to say whether or not that's why putin made his decision or not is another question. but most certainly the kremlin was informed about that meeting. >> and in fact, if we look at the various communications back and forth, even in the official information that was filed with the court by mueller of the admission from mike flynn, he was consulting with senior transition officials one of whom we've reported confirmed was

kushner. and others were included, k.t. mcfarland, at the time deputy national security adviser and other transition officials at mar-a-lago on the 29th of december in 2016. so there were a number of people involved in the national security team reporting to donald trump if not including the president-elect. who were involved in these communications. >> right, and that's very consistent with what i've thought all along. i was part of a transition back in 2008 with president-elect obama. we were all just finding who was responsible for whom so there's always a tendency to loop in more people than even needed. there would be coordination. i find it inconceivable that general flynn would be somehow freelancing and negotiating with the russians of all people given what had happened during the presidential election with russia. so you know, this i think is rather consistent there would have been coordination about

what the talking points would have been in that interaction with ambassador kislyak. >> want to circle back to the whole question of rex tillerson on a plane right now heading to europe. he's going to be meeting in nato with the allies as well as another meeting with lavrov, the russian foreign minister in vienna to discuss ukraine and presumably syria and other issues including north korea. this could be his -- we'll expect it to be his last trip of the year. the last trip with rc happened, press aide who will be leaving next week. at the same time, what is his standing now after all of this credible reporting that they are trying to ace hip out and perhaps are waiting till after his last foreign trip? >> standing is in not very good shape. no matter what his intentions are and no matter what president trump's long-term intentions are, if we believe them at face

value, the practical matter is he is extremely damaged goods. nobody believes that he speaks for the president anymore. nobody believes that he has influence in terms of policy making let alone policy implementation. and that's just not good for american national security. that's not good that we don't to have a secretary of state that can't speak on half of the united states of america at a multilashl gathering like these. >> another thing that has been pointed out is that the president has still not appointed members of the president's intelligence advisory board. the foreign intelligence advisory board has been a staple of u.s. foreign policy advising the president going back decades abdecades and often with you know, very, very important figures like brent scowcroft leading it. under what scenario would the president not even bother to advise, rather to appoint this

advisory board? >> well, like you just inferred, this board is a very prestigious board. democrats or republicans. it's often nonpartisan. but they are invaluable resources to presidents. this president doesn't seem to want to have that advice. he doesn't seem to want to have advice on a lot of things. they have lots of positions not only in the state department but the pentagon and throughout the government that by this time a year now into an administration you would think you would have your team that would be advising the president and also providing advice to the professional government bureaucrats and officials in these agencies. and to the professional military that are over in the pentagon. that is the american way, civilian control over the military. the president has decided he doesn't want to have that kind of people in place. that i think is a strategic mistake. because there's too many decisions is, andrea, for the

president to be the only person making decisions about foreign policy. there's too much information, too much decisions around the world that have to be made. this is a team sport. foreign policy. we need a team in place. >> even former presidents who had been cia directors themselves experienced intelligence executives like george herbert walker bush relied heavily on these outside advisers. thank you very much, mike mcfaul, for laying all that out. coming up, big move. will president trump officially declare jerusalem the capital of israel? potentially stoking more conflict in the region. peter baker joining me on "andrea mitchell reports." stay with us. [ mouse clicks, keyboard clacking ] [ mouse clicking ] [ keyboard clacking ] [ mouse clicking ] [ keyboard clacking ]

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decision and. >> he hasn't made his decision? >> he's still looking at a lot of different facts and when he makes his decision, he'll be the one to want to tell you, not me. so the he'll make sure he does that at the right time. >> president trump's son-in-law and senior adviser jared kushner this weekend saying no decision has been made yet about the president's campaign promise to move the u.s. embassy in israel from tel aviv to he jerusalem. palestinian arab leaders including king abdullah of jordan have warned the president this move could halt the middle east peace process and

potentially spark violence. joining me is ayman mohyeldin in new york and "the new york times" peter baker, previously the jerusalem bureau chief of "the new york times" and an msnbc political analyst. to you first, peter, why now? i know there's a waiver every six months. he has to decide in the next day or two whether to go along with that waiver and go another six months. presidents of both political parties have kick this had can down the road for a good reason, that it would foreclose the final settlement issues of jerusalem which are key to a long-term middle east peace agreement. >> it's part of the kabuki dance of middle east peace. nobody doubts jerusalem is the capital of israel or that west jerusalem basically will continue to be the capital of israel after some sort of eventual peace bargain. to say it now before you put out your plan and get concessions from one side or the other to many seems premature. why is he doing it now?

this notion he has to sign something every 90 days that he doesn't like grates on him. he's looking for wayses of saying fine, i'm going to sign something you tell me i have to sign that i don't want to sign but i'm going to do something about it. in the iran case, i'm going to decertify the deal which didn't have the same effect of dumping it all together. here he's not moving the embassy but saying jerusalem is the capital. >> and eamon, in the decades that i've covered middle east policy, there's always been some kind of solution for jerusalem that people have posited which would be to maybe doll some kind of vertical decision on the holy sitesry are on top of each other, the three major religions and figure out a way 0 carve out east jerusalem. that's always been the issue with the settlements that israel kept expanding into east jerusalem and other palestinian areas and foreclosing these final agreements. >> yeah, i mean, to quote ehud barak we spoke to yesterday was saying that this is an existential threat to the state

of israel, the fact it has 100 or so settlements block the blocks obviously in occupied territory detrimental not only to peace but to the very nature of israel being a jewish state and democratic state. he's saying it's pushing israel into a one-state solution. the issue of jerusalem in particular is highly symbolic not only because it implicates palestinians and israelis but a broader reach to the arab and muslim world. this is something arab officials have been warning the trump administration about, you're playing a little bit with fire. you may use this as a negotiating tactic to try to force the palestinians or the israelis or maybe even regional partners to come to the region to come to the peace table i should say, but the end result is that it could ultimately create some unrest on the arab and muslim streets and countries that are far beyond the region and that is going to be very dangerous for the united states. there have been warnings at u.s. embassies that a decision like this could create potential

backlash in terms of pro testifies and demonstrations. >> in fact, that warning has gone out from security. peter, 17 years ago, we saw au ariel sharone, then the prime minister, a very conservative prime minister in the netanyahu mode but actually more flexible than netanyahu has shown to be going to the temple mount, a holy site and it sparked the palestinians second intefada, revolt and a great deal of violence. >> we came close to something like that earlier this year when there was an attack at that same site and president netanyahu put metal detectors there caused a huge uproar. the trump administration helped defuse that. you see how volatile the region is, things that seem small to those of us over here or symbolic or unimportant have great, great impact in the region. that's why is this idea of calling it the capital may inflame things beyond what the trump administration hopes. >> eamon, i don't know if you've noticed this, but the u.n.

general assembly president excoriated the u.s. saturday night in a quiet weekend move. the u.s. opted out of migration and refugee global talks which were to start in mexico in puerto vallarta. we're the only country that opted out of this just to be discussing the migration and refugee issues but it was a real play to the trump base. >> there's two very important issues at play. nikki haley saying from now on american immigration policies will be decided by america alone. that's the kind of message that sends to our europe yab allies they're on their own, as well. germany, italy those feeling the strain of the migration crisis, they're going to feel america has turned their back on them a little bit because they are dealing with a security threat, dealing with economic threats as well as a country like turkey which is a nato member and pretty much being told america

will not be dealing with this crisis with them standing shoulder to shoulder. ironically though quickly this so many of these countries where these refugees are pouring out of are conflicts where the united states is directly involved. countries like iraq, syria, libya, yemen, and as a result, afghanistan. as a result, many of these refugees making their way to europe are a result of american foreign policy in the region. that is something that is going to anger many europeans. >> that is such a good point. ayman mohyeldin thank you. peter baker here. domestically, president trump landing in salt lake city shortly to announce a major decision. he's expected to strip more than one million acres of federal lands from protected monument status. the president making his case to reporters this morning before leaving. > we're going to be doing something that the state of utah and others have wanted to be done for many years. it will be one of the great events in this country in a long

time. so important for state's rights and so important for the people of utah. >> nbc correspondent anne thompson joins me now. tell me, what is the rationale for doing this to these beautiful, beautiful parts of the national homeland. >> the way i like to think of it is, this is basically a situation where you have fossils versus fossil fuels. the two national monuments in question are called bear ears and grand staircase escalante. and they have rocks that are millions of years old that hold the secrets of when dinosaurs roamed this part of the world and also they're where native american tribes have worshipped and lived for hundreds and hundreds of years, and they are very -- they both hold very important archaeological sites. they also hold big deposits of minerals and oil and gas. and so the question here is, who

is going to control those deposits? when you have land that is designated national monuments, that means no new mining, no new oil and gas development. you take away that designation, you open it up to that economic opportunity. and that's basically what's at stake here. >> and when we talk about these monuments, it's also a complete reversal of obama policies and so the president seems to be doing that, as well. it's part of his m.o. >> absolutely. if you look at grand staircase escalante and bears ears, they're sort of the book ends of the national monuments review, grand staircase was created by president clinton in 1996. bears ears was created by president obama last year. and they have come under great attack by republican lawmakers in utah. and again, it goes back to who's going to control this land. about 65% of the land in utah is

actually federal land. and it is a real sore point in that state. >> thank you so much. anne thompson. look forward to your reporting all day on this and on "nightly news." coming up, shoulder to shoulder, president trump calls roy moore to offer his full support. this is an endorsement, folks. what was said in that call next right here on "andrea mitchell reports." out the trash? (sigh) ( ♪ ) dad: molly! trash! ( ♪ ) whoo! ( ♪ ) mom: hey, molly? it's time to go! (bell ringing)

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go get 'em, roy, that was the president's message in a call from air force one to embattled senate candidate roy moore who says the president offered his full support and says he needs a fighter to help him in the u.s. senate. the white house has confirmed the call saying it was positive. let's get the inside scoop on all this from "new york times" congressional correspondent and msnbc contributor and nbc's vaughn hilliard who is in alabama just outside of birmingham. we'll have to get you a permanent residency in alabama, my friend. first down there, let's talk about the impact of the president. we knew he was going to campaign at a rally just across the border in the alabama media market in pensacola, florida. now he's calling from air force one, saying things before he left. tweeting about roy moore. they're all in. >> andrea, donald trump is about

the only thing roy moore has going for him outside the voter tally. he has a campaign operation. they're being outspent on tv and radio airwaves 10-1. the fund-raising reports came in last week. he raised over $10 million in the course of the last two months compared to roy moore -- roy moore raised just $1.8 million during that same time span. roy moore hasn't been on the road since dating back to thursday when he took part in an event. doug jones was in a christmas parade in selma. yesterday we were with doug jones in tuscaloosa. he has field operations across this state with canvassers, phone bankers. compare that to roy moore's operation, which has nothing going on at this point. we won't see roy moore today or up until the point he'll be with steve bannon tomorrow night in

fair hope. >> the other mystery, maybe it's not a mystery, is mitch mcconnell backing down in his -- he doesn't belong in the senate, he should step aside. now mitch mcconnell kind of rolling over on all this. let me just play it for you. >> i'm going to let the people of alabama make the call. it's been going on for a long time. a lot of discussion about it. they'll make the decision a week from tuesday. the ethics committee will have to consider the matters that have been litigated in the campaign should that particular candidate win. >> so, what's going on with mitch mcconnell? >> well, sources in his office essentially say mitch mcconnell very much wants roy moore to step aside and it's not going to happen so he says, if he's headed here, i may as well follow my president. and he says the. people of alabama will choose. when he gets to the senate, mitch mcconnell can't say, we should expel him because if you're saying it's up to

democracy, you can't say the voters who put this person in, now you're going to unanimously say, actually we're going to overrule an entire state. mitch mcconnell is in a tough space. he doesn't want roy moore in the senate, not just because of the harassment issue, but because moore will make ted cruz look mild. >> making ted cruz look mild. ted cruz already looks mild considering what they're about to experience there if he does win. how do you cover a race when the candidate won't campaign? >> reporter: say it one more time. >> sorry. how do you cover a campaign when the candidate won't campaign and won't talk to you? >>. >> reporter: yeah, andrea, when i was back in d.c. a month ago and you told me i'd be following a democrat every day around alabama, we think we would have been blinking a couple eyes at that comment. we can't track roy moore.

the closest you can get is ask him to talk to you through his car window. he has not engaged in a press interview dating back to november 9th when the initial washington post story came out. he talks to friendly media that doesn't ask him hard-hitting media. we have 20 minutes to see him at different local churches around the state at a time in which he goes up and propagates what is essentially a conspiracy. he's calling it a conspiracy. yet when we ask him to provide any evidence, he has nothing to offer. we're eight days away from potentially this republican candidate goingle -- being able to run a ghost campaign and not answer any questions in the process to becoming a u.s. senator. >> we still have not heard anything definitive about john conyers. in the world of politics, the saying that the voters have the say, the voters elected them, i mean, it's pretty extraordinary. >> especiallied in case of roy moore where these voters all around alabama, now they're very familiar with what roy moore is accused of doing.

doug jones made a point to make commercials featuring these women. when roy moore goes to the senate, you know the people of alabama understood what they were doing. >> just to keep note of developments on this whole front, the most shocking thing in the other part of the world outside politics is james levine. 40 years the musical director of the metropolitan opera, krukt r conductor has been suspended vofling accusations involving him and young boys. so that's the idea.

what do you think? hate to play devil's advocate but... i kind of feel like it's a game changer. i wouldn't go that far. are you there? he's probably on mute. yeah... gary won't like it. why? because he's gary. (phone ringing) what? keep going! yeah... (laughs) (voice on phone) it's not millennial enough. there are a lot of ways to say no. thank you so much. thank you! so we're doing it. yes! "we got a yes!" start saying yes to your company's best ideas. let us help with money and know-how, so you can get business done. american express open.

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and that does it for us. chris jansing is up next right here on msnbc. hi, chris. >> hi there, andrea. year going to start with what we often start with, that's breaking news. you see the president of the united states who's now landed in salt lake city, utah. you see orrin hatch, the long-time senator behind him on the right there. he's with mike lee as well. this is quite a controversial trip that he's making. he's going to announce that he's going to shrink bears ears and grand stair national monument. he's spending less than three hours on the ground but it will be a very consequential trip. it's his first visit to utah as president. and right there as we see him is that the utah air national guard base, which is right next door to the international airport in