evening."the rachel maddow show now. >> much appreciated. thank you for joining us this hour. the day started today with an unimaginable, terrible train derailment in washington state. we're continuing to follow the on going response now. the derailment happened at 7:3 many 3 a.m. local time. 10:33 a.m. our time this morning. came off the track and nose dived on to interstate five. 80 passengers and five crew members were on board. all but one of the 14 cars on the train, all but one, 13 of the 14 cars jumped the track. now, this is a train that was bound from seattle south to portland, oregon. the derailment happened south of tacoma, washington. as of tonight, officials are confirming three passengers on the train were killed and at least another three passengers suffered critical injuries. more than 100 people were sent

to the hospital after the crash. this train was making its first run on apparently, what we're refurbished tracks meant to provide a faster trip for this popular route. it happened at a spot where the track curves and the speed limit drops. they are looking at the pab possibility this train was going as fast as 80 miles per hour in a 30 mile per hour zone. now, that's being looked at. investigators have not said yet what caused the crash, but they have said the train wasn't using the latest safety system, which is a system known as positive train control. had positive train control been in effect, that system might have been able to slow down the train remotely, if in fact, it was going too fast for that curve. so interstate five in washington is still closed and it will be. this is a huge accident. a terrible derailment. we'll let you know more as we learn more over the course of

this hour. this is still very much a dwping story. we woke up to that major news this morning. shortly thereafter we got solomoner profile but fairly shocking news out of washington. one of the highest profile judges in the country stepped down. federal judges are appointed to lifetime tenure. they are entitled to take senior status, which makes it something like a part time job after they have been doing the gig for decades working actively until wicked old. judicial impeachments never happen. judicial resignations because of scandal, it doesn't happen. but today, judge alex kaczynski announced he will be retiring. 67 years old and served on the court for 32 years. he's one of the few judges outside of the supreme court who has a national profile and a national reputation. he's influential because of his seniority because he's been on the court so long. used to be the chief justice of

the ninth circuit. he's also influential because of his somewhat flamboyant rep tal ation and get picked up and discussed outside of legal circles but particularly influential with the judiciary and community because he's one of a hand full of judges across the country who reliably get their own law clerk gigs at the supreme court. clerks frequently end up becoming supreme clerks. that might not sound like much because clerk sounds small but a supreme court clerk ship is the golden ticket in the american legal system if you want to become a future judge yourself or legal big wheel, supreme court clerkship is a very good start to that and aleck -- alex

kaczynski can do that with his influence getting people spots. that's been true for a very long time and now he's out. "the washington post" two weeks ago broke the news of six former clerks and associates that said he behaved inappropriately. at the end of last week, on thursday, the ninth circuit court said they would investigate judge kaczynski because of the claims and came back with reports from nine women discussing inappropriate encounters that brings the total to 15. we learned of kaczynski's four law clerks he has on staff this year, two of them have resigned from that absolutely plume position with him in the wake of the allegations against him and as of today, alex kaczynski will step down. i know if kaczynski is not a familiar name to you, this may not seem like a big story but

yet, another powerful man being taken down in the new era of openness and accountability and sexual harassment and sexual misconduct in the workplace. this is an american story in a different sense, as well. it is just -- it's hard to over state how much of an out liar his resignation is is. this thing doesn't happen among high-level federal judges and at a time when many people in this country are seeing the stability and integrity of the judiciary as the biggest and best check we've got, while lots of other political norms seem to be falling by the wayside, you should just know, apart from and i ai si aside the content, his decision to resign is resinating like an earthquake within that branch of our government right now. so that's an important story. two big competing news stories, one is steaming straight ahead. the other seems to be getting

weird. the one steaming ahead is the tax bill. since trump has been president, the republicans have passed no legislation of any significance we if they pass it will be a big deal. if they do pass it, it's remarkable they will pass it without the vote or consultation of a single democrat in the house of congress. if they pass this tax bill, you will be able to say republicans were only able to pass one thing in the first year of the trump presidency, but if this is the thing they pooass, it's a doozy. they are expected to throw 13 million americans off health of insurance all together. most americans, 60% of americans

from the bottom of the income ladder through the middle class, according to a new analysis of the report released today, 60% of americans will actually have your taxes raised by this bill. at the same time, the bill is expected to add $1.5 trillion to the deficit. if you think about that basic math for a second. how can you raise taxes on 60% of people from the country and still have the government lose tons of money in terms of how much tax revenue? how does that happen? it's because of what happens to the corporations and people at the very top of the income ladder that will see gigantic benefits from this bill. so much so that we will add 1$15 trillion to the debt. the general shape of the legislation is clear from the first it ratiand benefit people top, the rich corporations. that's the basic shape from the beginning. as they have continued to change

a bill and tweak it and add stuff to sure up republican votes for it, that dynamic in the bill where it hurts the poor and rich has been getting worse and not better. worse, not better. you think they would be helping this thing become more popular. they are doing more of what has made it very unpopular. this afternoon mike lee and susan collins removed their names from the short list of republican senators uncome hitthi -- uncommitted on the tax bill. they announced they will vote for it. that probably means republicans will have votes when they put this to the vote in the house tomorrow and to the senate either tomorrow night or on wednesday. republicans are rushing ahead. we'll have more on the process and where that stands and an update on the people still trying to stop it. we'll have that coming up in a few minutes. so two big competing stories in washington. that's the one that's steaming straight ahead. the other major story in

washington is the status of the russia investigation and as i mentioned, that one does not appear to be steaming straight ahead. that appears to be veering into strange territory. nbc news has a remarkable kplu sieve today on what has been one of the very central basic questions about what happened between the trump campaign and russia and how strange it was. one of the things that we have tried to keep track of here on this show is the very large roster of russians and people connected to the russian government who made some kind of contact with the trump campaign or the trump transition before trump was sworn in as president. there are a lot of them. and we're not like some crack intelligence agency unable to unearth obscure contacts. we're going from publicly reported information about different russians and people connected to the russian government who all made contact with the trump campaign and because there are so many of them, because there were so many contacts with russians and people connected to the russian

government, one of the very central, very basic questions about all this from the beginning is, isn't that weird? like, that's -- like other campaigns don't talk about having 19 different russians and people connected to the russian government contacting them. didn't the trump people think that was weird? it remained a singular question, framing question from the beginning. why didn't a single person associated with the trump campaign or trump transition ever think upon being contacted by a russian that maybe that's weird, maybe that's a contact that should be reported to the fbi. nbc's exclusive report today puts an incredibly hot spotlight to the question. they report after trump and clinton secured the presidential nominations from respective parties, around the time the fbi was due to give classified intelligence briefing, the fbi also warned them to be on the

lookout for foreign spies. and this makes sense, right? russian intelligence, any aggressive intelligence service might target anybody in the u.s. that has access to information that russia wants or china wants, some other foreign intelligence service wants for some reason but if a person doesn't have access to normal information, if a person all of a sudden is getting high level top secret classified intelligence of a kind only provided to presidents and presidential candidates, well, yeah, by vir ttue, that person would be a target for any spy for someone going after them to get information. the fbi prepared a warning. in the weeks after he became the republican nominee, donald trump was warned foreign adversaries would probably try to spy on and infiltrate his campaign. it came in the form of a

high-level counter intelligence briefing and a similar to hillary clinton. the candidates were urged to alert the fbi about suspicious over tours to the campaigns and designed to educate the candidates and top aids about potential threats from foreign spies. they were timed to occur when they started receiving classified intelligence and classified briefings put them at greater risk to being targeted by foreign spies. so we're learning this for the first time today. we already knew that trump's first classified intelligence briefing as a newly minted presidential candidate happened last august, august 17th, 2016. this warning that we now know went to trump and his top staffers on the campaign, this is is very interesting for a few reasons. first of all, we know by the time trump was getting that warning, more than a half dozen trump campaign staffers, including members of his own family had already taken high-level meetings with

russians people sent from the russian government. so how does that not come up with a big be aware of russia infiltration over tours meeting. counter intelligence and espionage officers are saying you know, you're probably going to get overatures. if that happens, we know what that is. that's a big deal. give us a call. the trump guys are thinking, i wonder if that includes like the trump tower meeting last month when there were so many russians there they had to come in a mini bus. should we tell them about that? [ laughter ] >> like, not like that was warning about something they hadn't done yet. nobody tells the fbi, yeah, actually, glad you mentioned it, there have been tons of russians. we keep taking meetings with them. is that bad? also, after this warning from the fbi, we know the trump campaign including trump's

family members kept interacting with russians, right? after this warning let us know about overtures, there is donald trump, there is donald trump junior having back and forskana with wikileaks. they are warned to call the fbi if there are overtures. the trump campaign's line on the contacts with those russians is that those were all totally innocuous things. the reason they kept them secret for months is because all of them slipped their mind. if there was nothing wrong and that f nefarious, why didn't they say you need to call us when russians call you? but here is the other really interesting part about the scoop from nbc. if nbc is right the warnings to

the trump campaign, if those in fact came right around the time of trump's first classified intelligence briefing in mid august, we know that by then the fbi was already aware that the trump campaign had lots of contacts with agents of the russian government. right? by august, i mean, the fbi and cia by that point started their counter intelligence investigation into the unusual number and nature of contacts between trump associates and people connected to the russian government. so how weird is that, right? how weird is that? aren't you dying to know what the fbi guys were thinking? i mean, just think about that timeline, right? they started their investigation. the counter intelligence guys at the fbi know about all of these suspicious contacts between trump folks and russians before they go into the meeting with trump to warn him, hey, you know what, when you have contacts with russians, let us know.

if you were a counter intelligence official at the fbi, what were you thinking? was going on in your head at the time the fbi was giving this warning to trump. what was in your head? turns out we can answer that. because on the first week, excuse me, on the week of trump's first close fiassified intelligence briefing, within a week after that briefing, we have a direct quote from the personal text messages of the deputy assistant director at the fbi and he in this text message says what he thinks about what he knew at that time when the fbi was giving the warning. omg, i cannot believe we are seriously looking at these allegations and pervasive connections. the pervasive connections. apparently exclaiming over exactly what the fbi was looking at in terms of the trump

campaign and pervasive connections with russia. omg indeed. the reason we have that text is it a scandal? it part of why the russia investigation feels like it could go any one of a number of ways right now. as you know from the start of the investigation, republicans in the trump white house has come up with a series of things they say are the real scandal instead of the russian attack on our election and question of whether the trump campaign had anything to do with it. the first alternate scandal was unmasking. remember that? the problem wasn't that mike flynn was verdictly ta secretly the russians but we found out mike flynn was talking to the russians. that's the scandal. after they tried the unmasking, they tried uranium one. robert mueller is secretly made of canadian uranium and the christopher steele dossier into the real russia scandal and last week picked a new scandal.

texts between peter struck, the deputy assistant director at the fbi and lisa paige, who is an fbi lawyer. paige at one point had worked on the muller investigation but she's been off the team for months. peter struck had initially been part of the muller investigation and removed this summer after the justice department inspector general turned up a bunch of text messages that showed struck and paige communicating at a personal level and expressing various strong political opinions. mueller responded by taking struck back off the team back in june of this year. struck no longer works muellerinvestigations. the texts themselves are evidence mueller's team is bias and there are anti trump

sentiments expressed in some of these texts. after trump went after the cokh family, lisa paige forwarded an article about the khan family about peter struck and said jesus, you should read this and trump should go f himself. struck replied, god, that's a great article, thanks for sharing and f trump. during a debate in october, struck said i'm riled up, trump is an f-ing idiot unable to provide a cohaerent answer. he said this is f-ing terrifying and said clinton might lose. because of the anti trump texts from this fbi official who until six months ago did work, republican haves been on fire saying they show incredible anti trump bias for somebody that worked on the investigation but hasn't been there for six months. i got to say, the initial outrage how anti trump this

official was are based on a pretty specific reading of the texts because turns out he's seeing who comes in in terms of criticism. quote, these are texts between paige and struck. i just saw my first bernie sanders bumper sticker. makes me want to key the car. he's an idiot like trump. how about this about paul ryan? i hope paul ryan falls and crashes on a blaze of glory. martin o'malley is a freak show. i don't know what he did to deserve that. trump is a low human. would he be a worse president than cruz? trump, i think so. i'm not sure. struck says he might vote for trump, okay, i may vote for trump. he was pretty much calling for death for edward snowden. i'm a single issue voter. there is negative stuff between the two of them about richard clark and negative stuff about black lives matter and negative

stuff about mitch mcconnell and bernie sanders and former attorney general eric holder. there is negative stuff about jeff sessions. there is, as i said, negative stuff about paul ryan and chelsea clinton. there is quite a bit of anti clinton stuff. worried what p hahappens is cli is elected and clear and utter bias against the media. if you look at them, they have large donors for clinton. the fact siting source publicly endorsed clinton. at one point peter struck says he's a conservative democrat that will vote for john kasich. i mean, depending on how you excerpt the text messages, you could make a case here that these fbi officials were anti clinton and make a case, read them a different way that these fbi officials were anti trump and also make a case they are anti congress, that they are anti a lot of people in public

life. they certainly both express animosity about bernie sanders. okay. we don't know what these things mean in full context because we've only seen little pieces of them. why do we have these, though? right? these text messages were part of an inspector general investigation that is on going. these text messages have been selectively leaked for political effect in the middle of the on going investigation. >> do you know of any other cases where material in an on going investigation were released by the press officer to reporter reporters? >> i don't know the details, congressman, but -- >> are you aware of the ig rule which says that material in an on going investigation -- >> yeah, thank you. i appreciate that. when this inquiry came in, we consulted with the inspector general and he determined that he had no objection to the

release of the material. if he had, i can assure you i would not have authorized the release. >> the released material that's part of an on going i spe ing i general investigation. the inspector general obtained these texts from officials. despite what rod rosenstein said there under oath, the inspector general made clear what rod rosenstein said is not true. he made a decision to release the texts of the fbi officials and give to reporters even though rosenstein checked with the inspector general, the inspector general says that is not true. his office was never asked to sign off on giving these things to reporters. why did they do it then? this is a serious battle field as to accountability for the russia scandal and muller muell investigation. they are trying to smear the investigation, smear the special

counsel as bias. in this case, the department releasing texts appears to be helping them make that case in a selective and out of context way. and when asked about it under oath, the deputy attorney general appears to have not told the truth about that. is that going to end up being trouble for the deputy attorney general for rod rosenstein who oversees the muller investigation at the justice department? if it is going to be trouble for rod rosenstein, the white house will love that. all of these swirling beltway reporter right now that the president is seriously considering what means he has to impede the muller investigation, to block it somehow. if he gets any sort of reason to fire rod rosenstein, that will get them a good distance down that road. the president does have options if he wants to start firing people in the muller investigation. washington post reports today on hundreds of cities and towns around the country that have planned demonstrations in the event that trump fires robert

mueller and it's very specific. if the firing happens in the morning, people will demonstrate at 5:00 p.m. that day. if the firing happens in the afternoon, people will demonstrate the following day at noon. plans in effect. what if it's not robert mueller that gets fired? if it's rosenstein or jeff sessions, either of whom could start the process of the end of the mueller investigation for firing him has gone through a bunch of different it rations since this investigation started. and it's one thing to see they attempt to create that pretense from the white house or from protrump members of congress. it's another to see it from the justice department itself. the president does not have the world's great ed legal eagles on his side in this fight, though, and that may end up being the most important thing to decide what will happen in this radically veering story next. and that's next, stay with us. ♪

turn up your swagger game with one a day men's. ♪ a complete multivitamin with key nutrients plus b vitamins for heart health. your one a day is showing.

washington post just broke a news tostory that will unsettle white house. "the washington post" reporting members of the muller probe have been advised that they will be -- members of the probe expect to be working on their current gig, the mueller investigation for much of 2018. this will be over immediately. definitely by thanksgiving. i mean, crihristmas, i mean new years, that is causing agitation in the white house. we'll talk with a reporter about that in a moment.

i want to offer you one other piece of evidence the trump team is having a freak out what the muller investigation is doing. this lawyer was sent this weekend to two congressional committees apparently chosen at random by a lawyer for the trump transition team. his name is corey langhoffer and says mueller has taken thousands of e-mails without permission illegally even though the transition team wrote e-mails using government-issued computers and devices and dot gov addresses, said they were all private. the trump transition lawyer says many e-mails in his estimation are protected by quote the attorney client privilege, the dell remember

communications privilege. i'm not a lawyer and statist statistically speaking, neither are you. this is for the transition. trump is not president. he's claiming presidential privilege over stuff that happens before he's -- [ laughter ] >> there can't be presidential privilege if donald trump wasn't president yesterday unless there is privilege for the president of the trump organization. that's not how it works. the agency that provided these devices and e-mail accounts to the transition told buzz feed news that quote in using the devices, transition team members were informed materials wouldn't be held back in law enforcement actions. they read to buzz feed news agreements that anyone had to agree to using gsa materials including there could be monitoring and auditing of the devices and therefore no expectation of privacy can be assumed. folks that got e-mail addresses and devices signed off on that

but maybe they didn't have their readers. little tiny print. apparently, the way that team trump found out that muell erkm team has them, they have gone with mueller and been asked about the e-mails. that's how the legal team is surprised to discover mueller has them, all of them, thousands of them. so team trump is having a little freakout around that issue right now. evidence by accusations that mueller's team is acting unlawfully by trump's team wrote on government owned divisions and e-mail accounts but this is just one of a number of stories that we've had break over the weekend and into this evening that tell you why the trump white house may many having difficult night right now. more ahead. stay with us. big guy in place. the ford year end sales event is here. i can guide you in.

no, thanks , santa. i got this. santa: uh, it looks a little tight. perfect fit. santa needs an f-150. that's ford, america's best selling brand. hurry in today for 0% financing for 72 months across the full line up of ford cars, trucks and suvs. for a limited time, get an additional $1,000 cash back on top of 0% financing for 72 months. get these exclusive offers during the ford year end sales event. when you have a cold, get these exclusive offers stuff happens. ♪ { sneezing ] shut down cold symptoms fast [ coughing ] with maximum strength alka seltzer plus liquid gels.

new reporting from "the washington post", white house lawyers are expected to meet with robert mueller's office late this week seeking good news that his sprawling investigation focus on president trump will soon end and their client will be cleared. but people with knowledge of the investigation said it could last another year. the special counsel's office continued to request new documents related to the campaign and members of

mueller's team expect to be working through 2018 at a minimum. joining us is a reporter from "the washington post." thank you for your time. >> thank you for having me. >> i know you've been reporting about, i guess, i guess it's okay to call attacks, attack, oppositional strategy against themueller investigation. if this meeting between mueller and the president's lawyers doesn't go the way the president likes it to, are we getting a sense of what the presidencys as options? >> this meeting you're talking about might signal a new combative, contentious phase of this investigation because as you just said, we were told at the meeting, the lawyers are expected or hope that the mueller team will tell them they can tell their boss the phase of

the mueller rrkr investigation involving the white house is cleared or exonerated. this investigation could go on at least another year and so they will not get that kind of news so they may become a little more combative and contentious. they feel like they have been co-op riddi-ooperating and turn documents and allowing witnesses to be interviewed and now may say what do you want from us? documents do you want? that may be what we're seeing next. >> do we know why white house lawyers keep telling the president he's going to be exonerated? it creates an interesting psychological dynamic where the president may be expecting that and then we all have to wonder about how he'll react if he doesn't get that thing he expects. is the basis for the lawyers advice to the president on that front simply that the mueller

investigators haven't held back documents and nothing happened that scared them. >> they may believe from the questions they heard about and documents they have been asked for that there is is no collusion and thus, the president is not vulnerable on that point and that's what they are telling them. of course, we heard president trump say as recently as sunday there is no collusion and the president also said this weekend that he's not going to fire mueller and his spokesman told us this morning on the record that the attorney general and deputy attorney general rod rosenstein should not fear for their jobs. hard to know what that really means because the president is angry with jeff sessions since march when he recused himself and sort of everything from there led directly to the mueller inrest gages avestigati president spoke illy of rod rosenste rosenstein. he thought his testimony last week was weak and he's also --

he's referred to him as a democrat which is odd because rod rosenstein is a republican. he said they don't have to fear for jobs so hard to know what is going on there. >> i will say in trying -- i've been fascinated from the very beginning about the team the president put together to mount his legal defense, the initial hiring of dow and cobb not being interested. playing a big role on television even though he doesn't have grounding in the previous practice. we have a legal contention who seems blind sided by the fact that muller was able to obtain the transition team's e-mails. the general services administration seems to have responded to allegations by saying listen, you should have

read the fine print. that stuff you shouldn't have had expectation of privacy. it a strange bout of lawyering here. the ad mission they were blind sided and taken this case mueller acted illegally not to a judge but sent to a letter to two congressional committees. it feels to me as an observer there is lawyering happening here. >> there are loath ts of questi about the ability of trump's legal team. you're right about the e-mails. the thousands of e-mails the trump transition lawyer come plined about and the special counsel said hey, we got those legally. they say dot gov and this is part of the show and what they are doing and bias and the texts

between peter and lisa paige. this is all sort of a pattern and what we saw with the e-mails coming from the gsa this weekend or discovered, that's part of that pattern. >> yeah. >> our reporter for "the washington post" making sense of justicish shaws for america for a long time now. thank you for helping us understand this, appreciate it. >> thank you for having me. >> much more to come tonight. stay with us. remember how the economic crash

was supposed to be a wake up call for our government? people all across the country lost their savings,

their pensions and their jobs. i'm tom steyer and it turned out that the system that had benefited people like me who are well off, was, in fact, stacked against everyone else. it's why i left my investment firm and resolved to use my savings for the public good. but here we are nine years later and this president and the republican congress are making a bad situation even worse. they won't tell you that their so called "tax reform" plan is really for the wealthy and big corporations, while hurting the middle class. it blows up the deficit and that means fewer investments in education, health care and job creation. it's up to all of us to stand up to this president. not just for impeachable offenses, but also to demand a country where everyone has a real chance to succeed. join us. your voice matters.

if you were walking down lisbon street in maine, you would miss it between the main district court and trust building front entrance. you can see there it is. little lights. there you go. the office of susan m collins, u.s. senator. this was 11:00 a.m. this morning inside the office around a dozen faith leaders and clergy members paying their senator a visit. they came by to tell senator collins' staff they were disappointed she would be voting for the republican tax bill. they thought it was impossible and wanted her to change her mind and say no. they said they weren't going anywhere and would stay in the office until the senator changes her mind. >> we are really feeling calls to witness to the importa' inmo the bill and will stay here until rehear from senator collins she will vote against this bill. >> okay. >> so we're going to stay here and share in prayer and song

together. >> okay. >> which is totally fine. however, if people are trying to come in here to do actual service issues, if you'll let them in. >> of course, of course. >> thank you. >> we are doing actual -- >> no, i mean like -- >> when they come in, that's what i'm at, looking for our help. >> thank you. >> just leave a path there, please. >> sure. >> sorry, i didn't mean it like that. i i don't mean it, sorry. >> we are also asking for your help. >> the politest possible protest. the faith leaders sang and said prayers. when susan collins announced she decided to vote yes late on the tax bill late in the day, they stayed put at the close of business they were asked to leave first by the staff and then ultimately by the police. when they refused, five of them were zip tied and arrested and taken to jail. they kept singing as they were

loaded in the police vans. that was tonight in maine. senator collins faced pressure all over her state while this bill makes the final push through congress. in maine, her constituents never made it through the front door and held a rally in the ice in 20 degree weather because the senator staff locked the office. they said you left us in the cold and all signed their names. this was in texas today outside john cornan's office. singing tax bill christmas car rolls -- caro rolls. republicans unveiled it on friday and the reporting since then has been, well, it's been about a lot of unpopular stuff. obscure sweeteners to benefit the office. who is that for? incidentally not just the president's business but business senator bob corker is in. you might remember senator

corker needed a push to change his vote to yes. we also got yet another analysis of the bill to favor the richest americans and how middle class, 60% of americans will actually get taxes raised by the bill. it will represent a massive transfer of wealth that will touch almost every corner of wealth and add a trillion dollars to the debt and kick millions of americans off health insurance but we'll say it will probably pass. this was video taken in the hallway of the capital. people getting arrested in pretty good numbers. do we have that video? do we have that, you guys? nope. i will tell you, what we will show you as soon as we get it, is the video i just saw in from -- in this evening people getting arrested in pretty good numbers tonight at the u.s. capital. opposition has been mounting as we learn what republicans will vote on on this bill but they

did scrounge up the last votes. john mccain will be home from a recent cancer vote and probably won't need him. as of tonight, they think they have 50 they have 50 republican senators in line to vote yes. a vote in the house will happen tomorrow. the senate vote could happen tomorrow night or on wednesday. you want to roll that tape? this is from tonight in the u.s. capitol. expect a final herculean push from the people that face real harm if the bill passes. people out there since the beginning pushing against this thing. even though they look like they have the votes on the republican side, i expect protesters to be out there until the end. watch this space.

when you're clocking out. i'm the one clocking in...

sensing your every move and automatically adjusting to help you stay effortlessly comfortable. i can even help with a silent night. does your bed do that? i don't actually talk, but i can tell you how you slept. i'm the new sleep number 360 smart bed. let's meet at a sleep number store.

the president of the united states had yet another call with the president of russia. this weekend. so if you're keeping track, this is the second one on one call between them in less than a week. there was one on thursday. and then, apparently, yesterday putin called again. hey, boo, what's going on? what's on tv where you are? what are you doing? by our count, the fifth time of a meeting or call between washington and russia but we here in the united states have to learn about it from russia. white house communications department is usually pretty good at sending out regular readouts of calls and meetings in the president's schedule except when it comes to contacts with the russian government. calls with putin, meetings with the russian foreign minister, those things the white house

doesn't tell us about. moscow, on the other hand, is great at announcing each and every time russia gets a meeting with trump. it was the kremlin who let us know last week about putin and trump having that call on thursday. before that, november 21st we learned from a russian state-run news agency that trump and putin would be speaking that day. two weeks before that, at the asia summit it was a kremlin staffer who announced plans that trump and putin would be having one on one meetings in the sidelines of that summit. before that, it was the oval office meeting between the russian foreign minister and the russian ambassador and the president of the united states. not only did russian state media inform us of that meeting and release the pictures of that meeting, but american media, american media flat-out banned from the event. well, now there's another one. the kremlin just letting us know about a second call between trump and putin in four days. after the kremlin let us know about that, the white house did later confirm.

how long is this going to keep happening? us. it's what this country is made of. but right now, our bond is fraying. how do we get back to "us"? the y fills the gaps. and bridges our divides. donate to your local y today. because where there's a y, there's an us. but can also loweresterol, your body's natural coq10. qunol helps restore this heart-healthy

nutrient with 3x better absorption. qunol has the #1 cardiologist recommended form of coq10 qunol, the better coq10. i tabut with my back paines, i couldn't sleep and get up in time. then i found aleve pm.

aleve pm is the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. i'm back. aleve pm for a better am. chart imitates life. this summer we did a chart imitates life about people running for congress for next year. blue are democrats. red are blin republicans. people running not currently in congress. people who are running to try to get a seat in congress who don't already have one. all of the candidates filed

formal paper work saying they're going to run. not just declared and filed the paper work. they have raised at least $5,000 toward the campaign. numbers as of june 30th. and this shows you the best way to look at this is that these are for numbers the year before somebody's going to run so where it says 2003, that's people trying for a spot on the blalt for the 2004 election. where it says 2005, people trying for a spot in a 2006 election. all right? for our purposes, take a look at 2009. 2009, big difference between the democrats and the republicans. right? twice as many republicans running that year as democrats. tons of them running. this pike in republican challengers running in 2009, that was an alert that the big republican wave election was coming in 2010. and republicans picked up a huge number of seats in 2010. they picked up 63 seats in the house and 6 seats in the senate. you could see that baef coming because of how many more republicans than democrats were jumping out of the gate early to

run that year. well, now, look at this one more time. as we showed you in july this summer, next yore's election for 2018, democrats, boom, flooding the zone ahead of the 2018 elections. 209 democratic challenges compared with 28 of republicans as of june. three months later, september 30th, look at this. the democrats pulled further away from the republicans. it is now 391 democratic challengers compared to 71 republicans. five and a half times more democratic challengers saying game on, i'm in. when compared with republicans. if that lopsided count of candidates in 2009 was a harbinger of republican domination in 2010, what is that lopsided count this year tell you about what's coming up next year? midterms are only 323 days away. that does it for us tonight. see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, r