bullied. but this is a moment where we all can be reminded we can be better. i thank keaton jones for reminding us of that. all right. that's going to do it for me this hour. thanks for watching "velshi and ruhle." ali is off. all day long, you can find the two of us on social media or our show #velshi rule. you're in for a treat because the woman is in the building. andrea mitchell for andree kraia mitchell reports." >> right now terror underground. an attempted terror attack in one of new york city's busiest subway hubs during morning rush hour as a pipe bomb explodes injouriuring four people includ the suspect. >> it was effectively a low tech device. there were several injuries, we hope minor. >> this was an attempted terrorist attack. thank you the perpetrator did not achieve his ultimate goals. >> all-in, donald trump hitting the campaign trail for roy moore

and recording a robocall for the accused child molester as alabama voters get ready to vote tomorrow. >> hi, thises president donald trump and i need alabama to go vote for roy moore. roy moore is the guy we need to pass our make america great again agenda. and them two. some of the 16 women who accused president trump of sexual misconduct during the campaign sit down with nbc's megyn kelly today while the most prominent woman in the president's cabinet says let them speak. >> women who accuse anyone should be heard. and i think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up. >> he shook my hand you know and he kind of gave me the normal double-check kiss but then he held on to my hand and he kept kissing me. >> he kept kissing you? >> yeah, he went -- i don't know how many times back and forth. multiple.

and then he kissed me on the lips. and i was shocked. yeah good day. i'm andrea mitchell in new york where this morning's rush hour was thrown into turmoil when a suspected terrorist detonated an explosive device in a busy subway complex not far from times square. five people were injured including the suspected bomber. this video purportedly shows the explosion as it occurred. he was identified as 2-year-old an kad ullah last known to live in brooklyn. he suffered serious injuries and now in custody at bellview hospital in manhattan. new york's governor cuomo speaking at a press briefing. >> the first news this is morning was obviously very frightening and disturbing. when you hear about a bomb in the subway station which is in many ways one of our worst

nightmares. the reality turns out better than the initial expectation and fear. >> joining me now is chris jansing near the scene in new york city, nbc's justice correspondent pete williams, and bill bratton, former nypd commissioner, nbc counter-terrorism analyst. first to you, chris. tell us at the scene what the situation is now and what are you hearing from authorities. >> reporter: it's pretty extraordinary. we heard at the press conference just a few short hours ago they wanted to get everything back up and running as quickly as possible. look at just the last ten minutes. people are walking down the street and maybe five minutes ago, they opened up both eighth avenue which runs north to south and east to west. 40th street. if you are dropped in here and didn't follow the news at all, you wouldn't nope anything had happened. i'm told the port authority has opened, as well although i haven't seen any of the doors on

this side anyway opening and closing yet. this is exactly what city officials said that they wanted to do to show they are not going to let what happened here stop them. the other thing people are talking about is how much worse it could have been. you have this 27-year-old former cab driver who as you said lives in brooklyn. goes into below where i'm standing right now. there is this corridor, passageway between 7th avenue and eighth avenue. 7th avenue being times square. this is one of the busiest areas anytime but on a cold day like today, there would be even more people walking to try to get out of the cold. they said what went off was an amateur device strapped to his body. is he in serious condition. only a handful of other people sustained minor injuries. but as you can see behind me, andrea, very much up and running again and i expect as officials have said that by rush hour

tonight, all the subways and buses will be back up and running here in manhattan. >> extraordinary. the busiest time of the year of course, as well. christmas shopping, mad rush. thank you so much. pete williams, investigators are looking at motivation. what are they telling you and what do they know? >> there's conflicting reports whether he actually set the device off, andrea, or whether it went off early and he planned it to set it off later. it didn't completely go off. it was fortunately a very crude amateurish pipe bomb which he had attached with velcro and plastic zip ties to his body. there are also conflicting reports about whether he said something about isis just before it went off. but they're looking now at his social media, whether he was in contact with others. he came to the u.s. seven years ago from bangladesh, drove a taxi in new york city. from 2012 to 2015 for three years.

and in terms of the target, as your guest that's about to come can tell you better than perhaps anybody else, the new york city subway system has frequently been mentioned in terror plots and there have been actually been at least four or five plots that were foiled, attempted at various stages some in just the talking stage, some imminent. so it's not unusual that somebody would try to target the subway, but the fortunate thing here is that the device was extremely crude and damaged basically only the bomber. >> pete williams, thank you so much. on top of the investigation. bill bratton, so good to have you here. we know there are many plots that were thwarted. this plot or lone wolf and the response to it, textbook for the police? >> textbook in the sense of what we know at this particular time that lone wolf probably inspired preliminary law enforcement reports this morning were that he had given credit to isis as

far as the inspiration. the lone wolf is the one we fear the most because the cell type of directed attack is a potential to detect that and try to preprevent it. lope wolf if he's not interacting with anybody else as we saw this morning or the event at the hudson river several weeks ago running down the bicyclists, they're the most difficult to prevent against. >> we also know and have no idea what his particular motivation was or the context. but we do know that special teams were moved around europe and the middle east in the past week and a half in anticipation and then in the aftermath of the president's announcement on jerusalem, there was more security at jewish soft targets here and abroad. we don't know anything about this. this was a generic target, new york city commuters. that said, there's a general heightened alert, certainly in europe and the middle east. we don't know about here in the

u.s. >> that's right. immediately following the president's announcement, new york ramped up its protocols, additional offices at particular key points, jewish houses of worship, not the embassies but consulate here in new york. as a result of this morning, commuters this afternoon can anticipate at transit locations in particular you'll see a lot more presence. >> do we know who the first responders were? were they transit police, nypd? >> my understanding is first officers on scene weren't port authority. the tunnel is between the port authority and new york city transit. one of the things this is event clearly shows is the close coordination between all of the myriad of law enforcement agencies that police the city. the investigation will be the responsibility of the fbi, joint terrorism task force. but what you had this morning was pretty seamless collaboration and coordinationing. > one thing that has struck me, you see a lot of dogs and police

presence. as someone who takes the train certainly on the amtrak corridor all the time, several times a week often, you don't see as much security. is it invisible security? you don't have all the id checks and don't have magnetometers. >> there's three layers. what you see, dogs, uniformed officers, plain clothes, i can speak specifically for the subway system. the nypd, my understanding, is already looking at ramping up the number of officers assigned to the subways. even previous to this event. after today's event, that will probably be a certainty. then the third loop is the one that nobody ever sees. that's the detectives, analysts sitting at the command centers constantly scanning to detect something that might be in the process of coming together. new york benefits from the fact it's the highest priority target in the world and it has the best protection of any city in the world. >> well, a large measure a tribute to you and commissioner

kelly and all of your successors. you've done an extraordinary job. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. turning now to alabama where the polls open tomorrow. the voters get their say finally in the most controversial senate race since david duke ran in louisiana 27 years ago. both sides relying on surrogates president trump and steve bannon for roy moore, high profile after american politicians for jones. president trump recorded a robocall for jones but it's not clear at this hour whether the democrats of his campaign plan to use it since president obama is deeply unpopular with some voters. joining me is steve kornacki, national political correspondent here at the big board. vaughn, first to you. the state of play on the ground, there are polls all over the place. there was a fox news poll saying jones was up. their tracking polls say moore has been up all weekend. even you have been there for more than a month. you don't know who's going to come out and vote.

>> no, who knows. a college poll has moore up by nine. the fox news poll shows doug jones up by ten. i want to add new reporting from nbc news that the jones campaign now tells us that they are leaning toward sending out those robocalls that not only president obama but also vice president biden recorded on behalf of the campaign. expected to start going out tonight. where is this campaign right now? doug jones is on the trail. he just held an event this morning in birmingham and now driving down to montgomery where he will meet up with folks at a popular lunch spot before heading back up to birpingham this even. compare that to roy moore who hasn't been seen on the campaign trail dating back to tuesday. he will be here in midland city with the likes of steve bannon here tonight. but it's not typical in the weekend before election day during what they call the get out the vote effort for a campaign and a candidate to essentially go missing and not have a presence. the doug jones operation, i was with them in selma, montgomery, huntsville. they had folks out canvassing,

making phone calls and quite something numbers to see for a democrat in alabama. >> and there was a comment. >> senator shelby, richard shelby of alabama, of course. he's been in the senate so long, vaughn, he was there when i covered the senate. we're talking about the 1980s. and he's very, very popular. was just re-elected, 64% of the vote. this is what he had to say on cnn this weekend. >> there's a time, we call it a tipping point, and i think so many accusations, so many cuts, so many drip, drip, drip when it got to the 14-year-old story, that was enough for me. i said i can't vote for roy moore. the state of alabama deserves better. i think we've got a lot of great republicans that could have won and carried the state beautifully. and served in the senate honorably. >> so steve kornacki, what do we think is going to happen?

who is going to come out and vote? >> that is the cliche in politics it, comes down to turnout. but it all comes down to turnout. you mentioned the two new polls, one has the republican way ahead, one has the democrat way ahead. you average together everything out there in polling right now. you got a small 2 1/2-point lead for moore. take that for what it's worth. what would it take for a democrat to win a senate race in blm? you got to go back a generation to see that happening. here's what we can show you. this is what it looked like a year ago. the presidential race in alabama is typical these days, landslide win for donald trump for the republicans. if you're a democrat, if you're getting blown out, there's basically 13 counties in the state. you can still count on. these are predominantly black counties. this swathe of the state here and jefferson where birmingham is, about 40% black. democrats win those. had the question is where else can you win. if you're jones, there are two keys to this race. number one, what is the turnout

going to look like in here in particular among black vote? when you talk about president obama, the robocalls, the idea su want high black turnout and assume strong democratic vote but what is the turnout. the second question is how do you get that 35% that clinton got up towards 50%? you need to flip white voters. in a specific type of white voter is the target for the jones campaign, suburbanite, college hakted cultural little moderate. three key places to look tomorrow night. madison county where huntsville is, in jefferson county immediately here and also right outside of it. shelby county. we'll be talking a lot about shelby county and down by mobile and outside mobile, baldwin county. here the idea is, college educated suburban whites. these are the type of traditional republican voters who the jones campaign feels could be so offended by moore that they turn. that's the -- you high black turnout and flip white voters in those places. that's the path if it's there

for jones. >> steve kornacki, vaughn hillyard, thanks so much. to paraphrase, one more day. continuing coverage of tomorrow's pivotal senate race coming up here. stay with us on "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc.

president trump throwing his full support behind accused child molester roy moore recording an election eve robocall urging alabama voters to entirety the embattled candidate who is denying all charges. >> hi, this is president donald trump. and i need alabama to go vote for roy moore. roy moore is the guy we need to pass our make america great again agenda. roy is a conservative who will help me steer this country back on track after eight years of the obama disaster. get out and vote for roy moore. his vote is our or republican senate and it's needed.

>> and joining me now is laura payne, an alabama delegate to the 2016 republican national convention and backed trump for president. rick tyler, republican strategist and msnbc pill correspondent and ron klain, former senior white house aide to presidents clinton and obama. laura, first to you down there. we talked a couple weeks ago and you were openly conflicted about what to do, whom to vote for. have you made up your mind? if so, would you share? >> i'm still conflicted. it's one day out. i think a lot of us feel the same way. we're party loyalists. and we're just in an uncomfortable situation, a situation we didn't plan to be in. and we want to support the party. we want to support trump's agenda. and you know, then we've got these allegations that have surfaced and yet, one of them has had some problems with the story. the gloria allred's client you know, she didn't come out and say that she had written the

description underneath. saying who he was. and where the situation happened. so that puts some doubt into her story. and the fact that gloria au red represented her put some doubt in a lot of people's minds, not mine. but it's a tough situation that we're in. and i'ves inned like on social media that a lot of people are conflicted. you've got your hard-core roy moore believers that are not conflicted at all. but you've got a lot of us like me that you know, are struggling with our choice because we know that a write-in candidate is really essentially a vote for doug jones because it takes away what we would normal would i and some of my friends would normally vote for the republican party nominee. >> and just a quick follow-up, were you at all influenced, would you be influenced by what senator shelby did? >> what he did is -- is to be

admired and respected because it's really tough to go against the republican party in your state. but of course, with his age and with his stature in the party, he's kind of untouchable. but other people that go out and say if they want to run for office, they cannot run pore office for six years if they support another nominee or another you know, spec candidate other than the republican nominee. so there's a lot of you know, backlash that comes with that decision. as far as him saying that he wouldn't vote for doug jones, no,,ing that didn't affect my decision. >> it's really a personal decision. >> these decisions are so deeply personal and it's got to be really difficult. rick tyler, what do you hear from republicans, as well down there? >> well, look, i appreciate a lot of people are in laura's position she wants to be loyal to the party and support the party. you wouldn't support a friend of yours on a suicide mission and

sometimes you have to severe the live to save the body. i believe in this case she and voters like her are going to decide not only the future of alabama and how it wants to be seen whether it wants to move back to the past or move forward to the future and is also deciding the republican party because i think sending roy moore to the senate is going to send a signal not just to alabama voters but voters across the country in 2018 and it will be very easy for the democrats to create a messaging strategy around roy moore and the type of party that would support someone like roy moore. that would be very devastating in the 2018 election. >> ron klain, president obama and joe biden have recorded robocalls. it's unclear whether the democrats will play the obama robocall because of his unpopularity with many alabamians, particularly white voters down there. doesn't that tell you something about the state of the democratic party in deep red southern states? >> well, look, alabama is a

soundly republican state. it has been for a long time. the last time a democrat won a senate seat in alabama was 1990, 27 years ago. so this clearly is an uphill struggle for any democrat. i think the question is not whether or not a democrat can win alabama because it is a republican state. it's whether or not people in alabama will set aside politics and choose someone who is a honorable person who fight for working people like doug jones and vote against someone who obviously has a horrible record as a potential pedophile, not to mention who came out over the past couple days and said he wished parts of the constitution that abolished is slavery would go away, that the country was last great when slavery was legal. to elect roy moore is to take the country back 100 years or more and you know, i think that's what's on the table here. >> and laura, that is sort of a preview of what the democratic message is going to be in the

midterms if roy moore is a senator. and rick tyler was alluding to the future of the party. does that trouble you that he could really hurt republicans nationally even control of the senate? >> yes, it does. it does. but i'll say this, the republican party has hurt themselves nationally, as well. when they got involved in the primary to begin with, majority leader mitch mcconnell's senate leadership fund had a lot to do with outcome of this race with the nominee we have now. back then the polls showed mo brooks if he could win the primary, that he would -- wouldn't have problems being the nominee for the republican party. but the polls then also showed that if roy moore or luther strange became the nominee, that there would be problems with them beating the democrat especially roy moore. it was more discontinuing with roy moore. here we are. mitch mcconnell had a lot to do with getting us here.

because his money smeared congressman mo brooks and there was some untruthful ads out there and there were some ads taken out of context and i believe if he hadn't have entered the race with his $30 million or however much he spent, that we would have a different scenario. so i'm hoping and some of my friends are hoping that mitch mcconnell will interfere again to fix this problem we're in right now. and if he is elected, and that's one reason why i'm conflicted about my vote. if i do vote for roy moore, will the ethics investigation handle this properly and if they find out that these allegations are true, will they not allow him to continue in the senate. >> laura payne. >> that's something some of us are thinking about and making our decision on. >> my experience with ethics committee investigations are that they take three years and longer to reach final decisions.

but we hope that you'll come back. you've been so honest with us, and it's great having you on. i hope you'll come back no matter what happens. >> i sure will. >> thank you. >> thank you all so very much. coming up, 18 days, robert mueller zeroing in what happened inside the white house over a critical 18-day period. what did the president know, when did he know it our exclusive report coming up right here. carroll lee will be with us. stay with us. keyboard clacking ]

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now to nbc's exclusive reporting that white house special counsel robert mueller, excuse me, while robert mueller is drilling down on a critical 18-day period inside the white house, beginning january 26th, less than a week after the inaugural when acting attorney general sally yates warned that the white house national security adviser michael flynn was vulnerable to being blackmailed by a foreign power till february 13 dh when he was finally fired. why didn't the white house fire him right away in the joining me now is carol lee along with julia ansley who broke the story and a former fbi official who counseled both robert mueller and one-time chief of staff to james comey. welcome both. carol, let's look at the 18 days. the obvious question, why wasn't flynn fired right away and when did the president first learn

that flynn had lied to the fbi and was open, vulnerable to blackmail? >> right, those are the two key questions. we know that after sally yates had her first meeting with don mcgahn, that don mcgahn went then and briefed the president and a handful of advisers on the contents of that meeting. we also know sally yates told him flynn had been interviewed by the fbi and that mcgahn asked him, how did he do? and she didn't say. the natural thing to do and we spoke with several former federal prosecutor who's said that typically, don mcgahn would then go and ask michael flynn, did you also lie to the fbi. has recently become a big issue because of the president's tweet last weekend where he said he fired flynn because he lied to the fbi and michael pence -- sorry, vice president pence and so the key question is when did the president learn that michael flynn did lie to the fbi and to

look at all of these 18 days and what transpired inside the white house at that time may shed some light on that. >> and the significance, chuck, of mueller drilling down on this very issue with the people that he's interviewing, as to what happened, who knew what when during those 18 days, first of all, it takes us inside the white house. we're not talking about the campaign but someone who has confessed to a crime, michael flynn and whether or not the president was aware of that and when was he aware of it because that could have implications for a possible cover-up or obstruction. is that basically it? >> that's exactly it. andrea, what prosecutors and agents do and what nbc news did here is build time lines and into those time lines, they pour everything, phone calls, meetings, e-mails, financial transactions. and the more you do that and the more stuff you pour into your type line, the more clear the picture becomes.

so it makes perfect sense that this is what they're doing. i imagine they are indeed asking everybody who was in the white house and at these meetings what they recall and the more, as i said, the more stuff they pour into it, the clearer the picture becomes. >> and it all goes back also to sally yates' testimony critical testimony at the russia hearing in may. let's watch. she was being questioned by lindsey graham. >> would you tell the white house. >> so i told them again that there were a number of press accounts of staps made by the vice president and other high ranking white house officials about general flynn's conduct that we knew to be untrue. we also told the white house counsel that general flynn had been interviewed by the fbi. mr. mcgahn asked me how i did and i declined to give him an answer to that. i remember mr. mcgahn asked me whether or not general flynn should be fired. i told him that really wasn't our call. that was up to them but that we were giving them this information so they could take action. >> dg sally yates give don

mcgahn enough information to take action? >> well, what we know is that there was evidence that she had that mike flynn had lied to the vice president. there were transcripts of his phone calls with the russian ambassador to the u.s. on december 29th where they did talk about sanctions. they were made available to the white house and eventually we do know that they -- the white house officials poured over those transcripts. we also know that you know, it's not clear exactly when the president or if the president looked at those transcripts or went over the evidence. we do know he said in his interview with lester holt that you know, mcgahn looked into it and he didn't find anything to be of an emergency i think is how he put it. that was why he didn't see the need to fire him at that time. >> we also know, chuck, he told lester holt he fired comey because of russia. so you begin to build you know,

threads here or the possibility of firing him because of russia, and the tweet that he said you know lied to the fbi, he's not disavowed that tweet. it's an official record even though his lawyer tried to say that he had written it. >> the tweet in and of itself is marginally helpful. it sheds some light perhaps on what the president knew and when he knew it. but the statement to lester holt i think is more compelling. because in the president's own words, says that he fired comey because of the russia thing. again, here's where that timeline comes into play. the dinner between former director comey and president trump happened a day after sally yates went to the white house and alerted them to what she thought, what she knew were general flynn's false statements. so that's precisely why you construct these time lines as i mentioned, the more you pour

into it, the clearer the picture becomes. >> chuck rosenberg, carol lee, thanks so much to you and coming up, speaking out, a group of donald trump's sexual misconduct accusers unite in a new interview with nbc's megyn kelly. megyn joins me right here on "andrea mitchell reports." stay with us. your joints... or your digestion... so why wouldn't you take something for the most important part of you... your brain. with an ingredient originally found in jellyfish, prevagen is now the number one selling brain health supplement in drug stores nationwide. prevagen. the name to remember.

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trump is that he lined all of us up and he goes down i thought

this was going to be like a meet greet, hi, how are you? nice to meet you. it was not. it was hi, you know, just looking me over like i was just a piece of meat. >> so he kept kissing you? >> yeah, he went, i don't know how many times back and forth. multiple. and then he kissed me on the lips. and i was shocked. yeah, i mean, devastated. >> all of a sudden, he's all over me kissing and groping. and groping and kissing. when his hand started going up my skirt, i'm mot a small person. i managed to wiggle out and stand up. >> three women who had never met before today speaking out today about sexual misconduct they allegedly experienced from donald trump in past years. they at first spoke out during the campaign but didn't get much resonance to their accusations. the white house again today denies all of this. joining me is nbc's megyn kelly host of miggen kelly "today" who

spoke with these women on her program earlier today. megyn, difficult for women to come out. why now though? >> i think it's the me too movement. and they talk about sort of its is standing at home thinking what about us? what about our allegations? we came out more than a year ago and nothing happened. they're also participating in this, there's a documentary filmmaker who made a film called "16 women and donald trump." he's aligned with democratic causes but trying to make a documentation about you know, what he feels is harassment at the highest levels of the country. for the first time, they're speaking up publicly since they raised allegations more than a year ago. >>ing it certainly fits with what al frank en said in his hardly apologetic farewell speech the other night. the irony has not escaped someone that someone acknowledged on tape is, the access hollywood tape that everyone saw the groping and abuse he acknowledged on that

tape sits in if the oval office as well as roy moore could well become another senator. >> it strikes these women, as well. there are at least 16 trump accusers. there may be as many as 20. who knows how many more there are beyond that. as we've seen in the me too movement this fall, it's hard for women to come forward. imagine yourself as an accuser of donald trump's during a presidential campaign understanding the amount of blowback that would bring into your life. a lot of the women we talked to about coming onto the program you know, open trump accusers were too scared to do it. they talked to me privately about the amount of retribution unleashed against them and their families just for saying you know sort of me too, right? they didn't want to unleash that can of worms in their lives again. there are many more women who have already gone on the record too afraid to talk about it again. won wonders what's happening in the country we'll see others come forward. >> one of the more remarkable

things that happened in the political universe was nikki haley, this was nikki haley on "face the nation." >> women who accuse anyone should be heard. they should be heard and dealt with. i think we heard from them prior to the election. i think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way they have every right to speak up. >> and she was answering a direct question about president trump and the women who accused him. >> good for her. good for her. because this should not break down across partisan lines. either you're for women or you're not. either you want women to be able to tell their stories or you don't. there's no reason the rules should be different for a franken accuser versus a trump accuser. these women came forward at a different time in the country before we were inclined to listen. never mind believe. that's not to say that every accuser is always telling the truth. they aren't necessarily. sometimes women and men do make up stories. in this case of donald trump,

you've got between 16 and 20 accusers on the record putting themselves out there. he's dismissed them all as liars. the problem for trump is some of the things they're alleging he himself admits to on tape. one of the women on my show this morning talked how he came back sage at the miss usa pageant, she was miss north carolina at the time. and lined them up like pieces of peat and looked them up and down in the privacy of the dressing room, not where they're on display as part of a competition. this is supposed to be private. men aren't even allowed back there. there he was. donald trump is on tape with howard stern admitting he liked to do that. even though he's called this woman a liar. same thing about one of the women says she was a secretary at trump you're ta. he came out and kissed her repeatedly on the cheeks and mouth. he says she's a liar yet he's on tape on the access hollywood thing saying he liked to do that. now he dismiss it all as locker room talk. i used to practice law for ten

years as a practical matter, the consistency of the allegations and his own admissions on tape deliver a problematic case to him. >> of course, sarah sanders denied again today. that's what makes the nikki haley thing extraordinary. there are ways she could have deflected this. it seems she made her own decision what she wanted to say despite what the house has been saying about all of this. the other thing what happened with "access hollywood," you spent time with these women today, may have frustrated them is almost immediately maybe within an hour after the access hollywood tape was revealed, the wikileaks e-mail dump came out of john podesta's e-mails and they were off to the races. the distraction of that with the news media not paying as much attention to what the women were saying. > what i rememberer most about the sexism charge and harassment charges against donald trump was when trump counter punched with the bill clinton accusers at that debate. remember? the las vegas debate. i was there. >> so he had them lined up,

juanita broderick and the others. i asked these women whether they thought that was an effective counter move to dim the light that they were shining, and i think that was a frustration of theirs. honestly i feel like one of the frustrations of women in the 2016 election was that on the one hand, you had one guy who had been accused by 16 plus women of sexual harassment or assault. on the other hand, you had a woman married to a man who has been repeatedly accuses of sexual harassment or assault. these were our choices. that was reality in our country a year ago. and as you'd like to say look how far we've come 12 months later but we're on the precipice of an election down in alabama where an accused child molester is polling three points ahead in at least one of the latest polls. there's a whole hunk of voters who i understand don't want a liberal democrat in office. but to overlook the alleged assault of repeated 14-year-olds

and 16-year-olds, that says more about your identity politics. it says something about us as a country. >> you're doing a lot to expose that. i thank you, megyn, it's great to see you in person. >> likewise. >> make sure to tune into megyn kelly today week days at 9:00 eastern. coming up, president trump firing back at a report detailing everything from his tv viewing habits to his daily consumption of diet coke. that's in our inside scoop. stay with us. ♪ what i want, you've got, ♪ but it might be hard to handle ♪

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according to a "new york times" article published sunday entiltsed "inside trump's hour by hour battle for self-preservation," it says the president spends as least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of the television, sometimes with the volume muted and marinating in the no holds barred wars of cable news. "the times" fired back saying they stand by their reporting. let's get the inside scoop peggy noonan and msnbc's katy tur. welcome both. it's solid reporting by maggie haberman and her colleagues but denied by the white house. if you watch the tweet storm, it's clear he's watching cable tv because he responds to what he sees on "fox & friends".

>> according to the piece, which i thought fabulous, according to the piece, he has a tv on or is watching the tv, the president, four to eight hours a day, which is a heck of a lot of tv. i noticed this small little thing that said there's a huge tv panel in the president's dining room. >> that's bad for your digestion. >> oh, my goodness, why would you want to eat and have that stuff in the background? it speaks of an unusual preoccupation. in fairness, it could be said, people have the tv on in the background and they're not paying attention to it, but he seems -- i mean, if all reports are true, and the gossip you hear is true, he is preoccupied -- >> it's an obsession. >> -- by the images on the screen. to an unusual degree for a president. >> i think preoccupation is a nice way of putting it. >> author of "unbelievable," by

katy tur. let me do your plug. because you followed him, you know, minute by minute for the entire campaign plus. and so, this obsession actually worked for him because he made -- >> it did. it enabled him -- >> it fed social media. enabled him to constantly dominate the headlines, which is what he wanted to do. the article makes a have i astute observation that donald trump, when he was not the focus of attention, would want to turn it back to being the -- to him being the focus of attention. we saw that during the campaign. when a news cycle would move away from him, he would come out with a more outrageous comment in order to once again dominate the headlines. a perfect example of this is the day he announced the muslim ban. that day everybody was focused on president obama and the speech he gave on terror the day before. that was a day where people like me had a relatively light schedule in -- relatively, i should say. we weren't doing daily or hourly

live shots. that is until donald trump made this unexpected announcement he was going to ban all muslims. he recaptured the headlines. he's obsessed with seeing himself on television. ee obsessed with reading about himself in the newspapers. i've had those close to donald trump tell me repeatedly he won't read it unless his name is in it. >> what about the diet coke, speaking of unhealthy, all those diet cokes. >> five a day or five an hour. >> eight a day. >> eight an hour day. >> one thing about the president is he doesn't know what presidents ought to learn along the way and it is this, sometimes less is more. you don't always have to be in the public's face. you don't always have to be in the headline, top of the news. take a step back now and then. preserve the mystique of the presidency. don't be in everybody's face. it is odd that he doesn't have a sense of that. >> and just for a little historical perspective, you wrote the incredible point to hawks speech in normandy for

president reagan. you wrote the speech the president gave after the "challenger" explosion. presidents used to communicate with exquisite rhetoric -- >> soring rhetoric. >> soaring rhetoric with peggy noonan helping them write. we're now in tweet world. >> the gutter. >> i know. to work with president reagan on those addresses was to be working with someone who had a sense, as you remember so well, of the dignity of the office, but also of his own dignity and the importance of history and its dignity, if you will. we're in a rougher age. our president is very much part of that age. >> katy, can we ever get back? >> that's a question i grapple with. i think every day in covering what we cover and the minutia of every moment, every donald trump tweet, every development with even the mueller investigation, we are quickly losing the forest for the trees. right now we have a president who's got an all-out war against

the facts, against the truth, against the news media. we'll be feeling those repercussions for decades to come. >> we'll leave it there. to be continued. come visit again. thank you. come visit. >> come more often. >> thank you, guys. and more ahead. we'll be right back. 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...

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thanks for being with us. that does it for this ted digs of "andrea mitchell reports." katy tur is right here on msnbc.

>> itd ju just moved from one e the studio to the other. i'm katy tur from msnbc headquarters in new york. we start with terror in times square. an explosion inside a new york city subway passage during rush hour. why authorities say it could have been worse. and building his case. an nbc news exclusive report examines where robert mueller's team is laser focused. and it appears that possible obstruction of justice by the president could be on the table. the final countdown. how each candidate in the alabama senate race is trying to get by with a little help from their friends before voters head to the polls in less than 24 hours. police have identified the suspect as 27-year-old akayed ullah from brooklyn. four commuters suffered minor