he accuses the president of any wrongdoing. if that were to happen, it would be a departure from the tone the president has so far been striking. >> well, i feel badly for general flynn. i feel very badly. he's led a very strong life. and oh, roy. unsuccessful candidate roy moore files a last-minute complaint alleging election fraud. this just hours before alabama officials are set to certify that state's senate election result. >> i think it's ridiculous. i'm sure people will assert that i'm a strong republican but i did not support roy moore and he'll concede the election. >> it's time to move on. really. his day in the sun is over. and a tax to grind. americans lining up at tax collectors' offices around the country in a mad rush to prepay their property taxes before that new tax law sets in.

>> i figured i would take the chance that i can make our real estate taxes deductible this year, so i just emptied much of my savings account. >> why, because of the new tax law. because if we don't, we'll get screwed. basically. and good day. i'm steve kornacki in for andrea mitchell, and we begin with the mueller investigation. a surprising new report out says the president's legal team may end up portraying financial security adviser michael flynn as, quote, a liar. the "washington post" reports that president trump's legal team is prepared to accuse flynn of lying if the former national security adviser ends up accusing the president of any wrongdoing. this morning the president's outside counsel john dow tells nbc it is, quote, complete nonsense. more fake news. nbc's garrett haake is in florida where the president continues his vacation.

garrett, let's understand exactly what we're learning here. the president's public posture has been that flynn is being railroaded, he's a good guy, this is the legal team saying, look, if flynn ends up saying something to mueller about accusations of wrongdoing, this would be the strategy? >> reporter: well, look, legalities be clear. white house sources of the "washington post's", not nbc's, is saying this is the "in case of michael flynn emergency break glass plan," that they would then come out and try to paint flynn as a liar, as not a credible witness. officially, as you pointed out, the president's outside counsel is saying, this story is bunk. they're saying it's fake news, it's nonsense. privately white house officials are are saying similar things. there are potentially two reasons for this. number one, it could simply not be true. this could not be something they're taking under consideration. and two, if you're concerned at all about what michael flynn mayor may not be continuing to say to robert mueller and his investigators, having a story

out there that says you're planning to throw him under the bus is probably not the best message to send to flynn about how he should proceed. so, again, the white house is pushing back pretty strongly against this report, and i guess it's obviously worth noting, as you pointed out a little bit in the intro, too, the president has a long on-the-record on-tape history of praising michael flynn as a general, as a patriot, as a good man, both before he was the national security adviser and after he was fired from that job. so if, indeed, the white house does decide to take this tact down the line, it's politically and legally problematic for all of those reasons. >> and unrelated to this, though, but the president is making a little bit of noise on twitter, i understand in the last few minutes, a message on north korea and china. we put up on the screen, trump saying, caught red-handed. very disappointed that china is allowing oil to go into north

korea. there will never be a friendly solution to the north korea problem if this continues to happen. garrett, what do you make of this? >> reporter: this is another example of twitter diplomacy from this president. he's at the golf course this morning. we don't know if he's on the course or back at the clubhouse. this is about the article in "vanity fair" they had produced about hillary clinton, and then dropping the line of china allowing oil to be smuggled to north korea in violation of the sanctions. china has denied this. it's been picked up by fox news. it's possible that's where the president saw it, but again, the chinese element to figuring out whatever is going to happen in north korea has been an enormous part of this president's strategy, trying to amp up the pressure on the chinese, trying

to get the chinese to then amp up the pressure on north korea to denuclearize or to change their posture on their missiles. this is a fascinating statement coming out of the president who is at or on the golf course as he's putting this out. >> nbc's garrett haake down there in west palm beach. garrett, thanks for that. joining me is ned price, former security director and nbc's national security analyst. nbc's national justice reporter julia ainsley and a political analyst. julia, the "washington post" about possible strategy for the president and his team if michael flynn accuses him of wrongdoing. there's a question of how to interpret a report like this. on one end, you might look at this and say isn't that only common sense if he tells prosecutors, look, he did

something wrong, who wouldn't say he's lying? >> i think garrett picked up on a very important point in that the trump legal defense team would not want michael flynn to hear at this point that they are going to throw him under the bus. particularly they would rather be dangling the idea of a pardon so that he wouldn't want to expose all the information that he may have learned. again, he worked on the campaign, the transition and in the white house. he wouldn't want to give all that information because he may think, well, these people are still on my team. perhaps i could get a pardon in the end. they would rather have that in his head as he goes in to cooperate rather than have a story like this one from "the post" that says he might distance himself, call himself a liar and go back under the bus. of course, any defense lawyer would want to go ahead and start undermining and find anything they could find to kind of dilute and take away any

credibility. that's just a classic procedure. >> that's the part i'm trying to figure out here. what we're hearing described here, at least potentially, are we hearing basic lawyering, preparing for every possible contingency if it were to happen that flynn accused him of wrongdoing, the white house would file this strategy. or is there any indication that the white house's lawyers and their understanding of this situation has changed in the last few days or last few weeks in a way that makes them think now that flynn is more at risk of saying something like that than he was when this plea deal was announced? >> that's a really good point. what we're picking up on is just there is an increased level of anxiety. this began this month after the flynn plea agreement, then we had michael pence trying to distance himself from flynn saying that he knew he had lied to him, he wasn't sure about him lying to the fbi. more reports from nbc saying mueller is really focused on who

knew what about flynn when he was in the white house. and then the fact the investigation is still ongoing, that it hasn't wrapped up, and that is really getting under the skin of the president right now. and they know that one of the reasons why it's expanding is because of information they're able to get from michael flynn. so all of these things add up to really target this anxiety on this one person, michael flynn, so it would make sense that they would be trying to do everything in their power to discredit him and to make him a weaker tool in the hands of the investigators. >> and, jonathan, just your reporting from the white house, i'm wondering their thinking on that issue julia is raising there, the possibility a pardon has been discussed. the president says, i don't want to talk about it yet, seeming to suggest it's something he may talk about in the future. dangling a possible accusation. what is your thinking on this. >> there's been some ideas

throughout the white house. they have encouraged him to push back saying, this is something endangering your presidency, you shouldn't just let it happen. meanwhile, the president at this point has largely been listening to inside counsel who is assuring him time and again, this is going to get wrapped up soon, you're going to be exonerated. that deadline was pushed back. they originally said thanksgiving, now new year's. that seems pretty unlikely. this is something that's going to dog the white house into the new year. there is a growing frustration that everything they're doing is being shadowed by this probe. the president has gone out of its way not to rule out a pardon for flynn. so i think you're seeing, dangling that as an incentive like, hey, i went out there for you. i didn't back up paul manafort when he came up to legal scrutiny. but flynn is the guy the president has sort of remained

loyal to, and i think he's hoping flynn returns that favor and expresses loyalty to himself. >> the white house in some ways are in the same position the rest of us are, and we don't know what's going on inside that mueller investigation. i know a couple months ago the name papadopoulos came up. none of us had been talking about it. it turned out mueller was going there. there is an element here from everybody either involved or watching the story and trying to figure out what all the possible contingencies here are. >> to go back to your point and the discussion with julia, i think what's less significant here is not the substance but the timing. the timing of this is most interesting to me because you'll remember that the president's lawyers had a session with mueller's team just last week. so days after their session with mueller's lawyers, we're now hearing this clear twist in strategy, this clear veering from the road that trump and his

team were on before. so what we have now is a carrot and a stick strategy. the carrot is where the president was calling flynn a wonderful man, a goodm man, telling reporter mike isikof to stay strong. we're now hearing there is a stick strategy in place. i think whatever trump has heard from mueller's team, they decided they needed to incorporate this stick. so to me that suggests that what they heard from mueller's attorneys and prosecutors really took them for a loop and really left them perhaps a bit stunned. >> and again, we had yesterday, i think it was, the brother of michael flynn was out on twitter. he had one original message, deleted it, made it a little bit more -- a different message but asking for a pardon for his brother. i want to switch gears, though, jonathan, because we have you here and it takes a look at the

year that was in the white house but particularly focusing on a two-week period end of july. there's been some explosive periods from this administration, but this is when scaramucci came in, scaramucci left. john mccain did his midnight show there on the senate floor. take us through what you've learned about the white house in this period. what does it tell about this presidency at the end of year one? >> the end of july was really a microcosm for donald trump's 2017 where a loft thint of thin tie head and it set the tone for the year moving forward. scaramucci's arrival in many ways led to reince priebus' departure, and therefore, more importantly, john kelly's arrival. we have seen people we talked to in the white house say, that was a significant moment, an inflection point for this administration. after scaramucci's departure, the sense of morale was lower in

the building. now with john kelly, there is a sense of a flow of purpose. he is gathering the flow of information. he is reining in the legislative process. defeating health care, as you said, but from there lessons learned how to involve the president, how to involve the legislative staff leads to a victory in the tax bill. but it's deeper than that. that same period we saw, perhaps, the irredeemable rift between the president and two key members of his cabinet. it was where rex tillerson and defense secretary mattis and others took to school why a robust american presence was needed around the globe, pointing out its impact on businesses, including the trump organization. after that meeting is when rex tillerson is reported to have called the president a moron. also during that stretch we know the president's frustrations with jeff sessions came to the surface, that he was saying a lot of the time that he was furious with the general for

accusing him of the russia probe. that has led him to bob mueller, and he has taken turns publicly and privately going after sessions. telling people around him if he had known sessions would recuse himself, he never would have appointed him attorney general. if he had never appointed him attorney general, he wouldn't have had the roy moore debacle. >> all of that is a 13-month stretch of that turbulence we saw in the first year. ned, let me bring you back into that. obviously you're a critic of this president and a critic of this white house. i'm curious, though, to take a step back from your policy grievances with the administration, after year one do you see an administration that's maturing in terms of the mechanics and the efficiency of being president, or do you still see the chaos that jonathan is describing here sort of lingering into year two? >> steve, i certainly don't think we saw the chaos that really marks the first couple months of the trump administration.

these were in the heady days of the reince priebus tenure of chief of staff when the white house door was left open. it was really decreed by tweet that we saw much less of. there is clearly some tension between this team. you just have to look at the relationship between the president and his secretary of state, as jonathan said, but also, of course, the president and his attorney general. that relationship doesn't seem to be getting much better. but i think what has been strengthened is the process, not so much the personalities, and so much of this is process, and if john kelly can keep the trains on track, we may see some more victories from this administration going ahead. >> ned price, julia ainsley and jonathan le mere, thank you for joining us. roy moore rattles on, the alabama judge trying to make senator. now he says the results may have

been rigged. we're going to take a look inside the numbers at what his claims are and whether they hold up. this is "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc.

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we are indeed in a struggle to preserve our republic, our civilization and our religion, and to set free a suffering humanity. and the battle rages on. >> the battle may end this afternoon for judge roy moore. that is when alabama's secretary of state john merrill says he's going to certify the elections of this month's special senate election officially making democrat doug jones' victory final. moore is hoping for a political hail mary, though. he has filed for a potential election fraud in state circuit court, claims what he says are irregularities in jefferson county. that's around birmingham. he added in the statement that he passed a polygraph clearing

him of any misconduct allegations. remember this thing in the election a few weeks ago? take a look at what roy moore is claiming. this is where things stand with all the votes. secretary of state poised to certify this thing. what roy moore is saying here, a couple different claims, though. the big one seems to center around turnout, casting aspersions on the turnout in jefferson county. jefferson county is birmingham and the suburbs. you can see this is a big democratic county. it typically is a big democratic county. even hillary clinton carried this in the presidential race as te she was blown out of alabama. but the point roy moore is making here or seems to be trying to make, he says the turnout level in jefferson county was 47%. that was the voter turnout rate. and the voter turnout rate statewide in alabama was 43%. so the suggestion seems to be that because the voter turnout rate was a little higher in jefferson than statewide, that indicates some sort of fraud, some sort of illegal voting, something that casts aspersions

on the integrity. look, you would not normally look at 47% in one county when it's 43% statewide and come to that conclusion. that's what averages are. it's 41 in some places, 45 in others. but, anyway, that seems to be the argument he's trying to make here. you saw the secretary of state from alabama, a republican, he's already responded to these claims and said not going to change anything, i'm going to certify this. to even call this a hail mary. hail mary passes, sometimes they're completed. hard to see this hold water with anyone looking at the results. that should be certified in the next few hours. white house chief of staff mac mcclarty and for ted cruz's campaign. is he going to be haunting republicans for months, years to

come? >> something established republicans can all agree on, or most of us can agree on, if we never heard roy moore's name again, it would be too soon. jefferson county is a democratic county, as you correctly pointed out. the enthusiasm was with the democrats. so in the republican counties where you get 43%, you would expect a suppressed vote when you have an accused child molester on the ballot. and in the counties who said, hey, here's our shot at getting a democrat elected in alabama for the first time in 25 years, you would expect for a larger turnout. so i think that simply explains the difference. >> mac mcclarty, as a democrat, i wonder if you're looking at what happened in alabama. obviously extreme allegations that came out about roy moore, but the idea that the republican base in alabama choose to nominate a candidate who, even before those allegations surfaced, was jeopardizing a seat that otherwise would be a slam-dunk for republicans, is that something you're looking at in 2018 as a democrat and say, hey, that could happen in other

states. we could have opportunities on the map we weren't expecting. >> steve, you're right. the trend in alabama, and perhaps even more tellingly in virginia, which is a purple state where ralph northam by a considerably larger percentage than expected. and the polls suggest that with a 13-point edge, but it's still a long way to go. as far as alabama is concerned, i would really note that the senior center of alabama came out against roy moore. that was a factor. the good people of alabama had the courage to stand up and vote their conscience and do what's right. it is time for judge moore to ride into the sunset. >> let's take a look, then, moving ahead into 2018 when apparently doug jones will be the junior senator from alabama. for the republicans who control the house still, it seems there is a debate taking shape about what direction to go next. trump may be indicating

infrastructure. that was one of those issues that sort of separated him from the republican orthodoxy during the campaign, and you got paul ryan and some republicans on the hill saying, this is a chance to do that entitlement reform, medicare, social security, things trump said as a candidate he's not going to touch. how many of those things will give? >> i'm not sure republicans will want to give up things in 2018 when their party is in power. the party in power tends to lose seats. i don't think we'll get any entitlement reform. if we had the president in a typical honeymoon first year, 67% approval, you would easily get infrastructure reform and maybe even entitlement reform. but when the president is at 30% and with the economy bursting at the seams, the democrats are not going to let him have a win on, so i don't think we get any infrastructure reform this year. >> so, matt, that's the interesting question here, because -- and we'll talk about this in a little bit, there are a bunch of democratic senators

from the united states, a whole group of them. is there any pressure in 2018 that president trump can exert on them to get them to vote for some part of his agenda, on infrastructure or anything else, or does the fact he's sitting in the mid-30s with approval give him a pass? >> seeking any term, president trump's numbers we -- obama wen. we're not seeing that with president trump. i think the real question is, steve, this president has not quite pivoted from campaigning to governing, really reflective of your earlier segment, and his poll numbers reflect that. he has not unified the country

or broadened his base. again, president clinton was able to do that. even though he came to office with 43%, after his first year, his approval rating was about 55%, marked improvement. >> all right. mac mcclarty and public strategist and nbc contributor. thanks for joining us. there is a mad dash by homeowners trying to get ahead of president trump's new tax law. this is about taking care of property taxes before a critical deduction shrinks. cnbc's eric shimi is in westchester county. they're changing the deductibility of the property taxes. are folks going to be out of luck or is it going to work for them? >> it's going to work depending on what taxes they're paying now. here in greenberg, thaelt's the town in westchester county, they already know the money they owe

for the school taxes. so school taxes due in april, they can pay now. but other taxes, county taxes, taxes you don't know about yet, you can't pay those. they are not accepting those prepayments here at the town hall. it depends what kind of tax you're paying. you can deduct those if you get it in by tomorrow. >> so there is some hope out there for these scrambling homeowners. thank you for that. coming up, the next fight. what to expect in the battle for the balance of power in capitol hill in 2018. this is "dreenandrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc.

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we know historically the party that holds the white house loses seats in the midterms, and that's why the rnc has been on the ground from the beginning of this year. we're already in 21 states working our field program. we've raised unprecedented amounts of money that we're putting into these states early, building out our field program so that we can win in these midterms. >> the rnc chair says her party is ready to fight off the democrats in 2018. she's right when she talks about the history there. the white house party in midterm elections almost always loses seats, it's almost always a question of how bad will it be. that is the question. the big election in 2018, obviously. who is going to control the house at the end of the year,

who is going to control the senate? let's take a look at the stakes for next year. what republicans are trying to hold off, what democrats are trying to make happen. 24. that's the magic number for democrat in the house. if they can flip a net gain of 24 seats, democrats would take back the house. you got to say, when you look at what they call wave elections in the past. 2006, think about that when democrats took that back. they won over 30 seats that year. in 2012, they took back 30 seats. where are democrats looking? 24 is the target. you're going to hear a lot about these districts next year. what do they all have in common? they are all represented by republican members of the house. these are all districts won by hillary clinton. they voted for clinton over trump and elected republicans. these are the top democratic targets in 2018. they think these are the most right republican seats to flip. a lot of these districts had

sort of a common characteristic. a lot of these are suburban. we talk about those college-educated white folks who are traditionally republican. maybe they're turning on the republican party because of trump. there are seven of them alone in california. the northeast, a bunch there, too. some of these republicans have already retired, too. they don't think their chances are necessarily that good at surviving. you can look close districts. trump won these districts but it was close. his margin was less than five. you can find 13 more districts there, republican districts where trump won by less than five. expand that a little further. single digit races. trump won by single digits. you can find two dozen more. 59 seats, basically. 59 republican seats are in districts that either hillary clinton won or trump won by fewer than 10 points. that's sort of the broadvi view if we expand it out, of the democrat target lists.

they need to flip 24. that's the house side. that's what democrats are trying to make happen. there is also the question of the senate. we said just a minute ago, by the way, the alabama secretary of state poised within hours to name doug jones the official winner. that would give democrats 49 seats in the senate going into the next year, republicans 51. democrats, you can do the math. they need a net gain of two senate seats. normally you say two, that's not hard to get. the problem for democrats is, in as recently as a few months ago, it was supposed to be impossible. the problem for democrats is they are defending so much turf in 2018 on the senate side and republicans not much of it. this is what the battleground is starting to look like right now. here's what you're looking at. the blue states, these are democratic incumbents, democratic senate seats that are up in 2018. with the exception of minnesota, which we'll get to in a minute, every other one of these blue states you see, ten of them total, they voted for donald trump in 2016. so these are states that voted

for trump where democratic senators have to win reelection next year. you can look at some of these. look at west virginia, mansions there, missouri, north dakota. some of these states the margins were gigantic for republicans, too. the republicans think if they could pull off one or two seats of these blue seats here, that alone could save the senate. minnesota was not a trump state. it was almost a trump state. that's where you got al franken. he's going to be retiring. there is going to be a special election next year. it looks like there will be an appointed democrat running for that seat. you could kind of lump minnesota as one of those seats democrats have to worry about. for democrats to get that net gain of two, they pretty much have to swoop all those blue states. it's difficult to accomplish but not impossible. then you look at the states, you may have problems in the primary and the general election. jeff flake already said he's not

running again. the republicans, it's a question of which candidate they're going to nominate. there is definitely a possibility for democrats in nevada and arizona. another one that emerged was tennessee. it's not so conservative as neighboring states in the south, but the big thing democrat are talking up here, they have a popular two-term governor who decided he'll be running for the senate next year. if the national wins end up blowing against trump and the republicans, maybe with a candidate like that, in a state like that, with an open seat, maybe that's just enough factors coming into play to give tennessee a shot for democrats. again, democrats, to get that net gain of two, it sounds easy. but you pretty much have to run the table in there and then you have to pick off two or three states. you see how that alabama win

changed the look of the senate. even if things are going their way in terms of the environment, a lot is going to have to break just right for them if they're going to get the senate. that's an early look at 2018. i guarantee you you'll be spending a lot more time around this thing, weeks, months to come. coming up, tweeter in chief. we'll look back at the integral role of tweeting in mr. trump's first year in office. only on msnbc. whoooo.

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donald trump's twitter habit has been fueling political discussion since he announced his candidacy back in 2015. our friends at "morning joe" took a look back at how this year's tweets have shaped his presidency. >> are you going to be tweeting and whatever you're upset about just put out there? >> i'm going to be very restrained, if i use it at all. >> he tweeted yesterday, this isn't going to be a one-off. this is going to be every day with him. >> first of all, it's not a travel ban. >> this was president trump's tweet yesterday. if the ban were announced with a one-week notice, the bad would rush into our country during that week. >> the president of the united

states, on a saturday morning tweet storm, accusing his number one predecessor of tapping his phone. >> i tweet two or three or four or five times a day, but if i make one mistake in a month. this one, i don't think, is going to prove to be a mistake at all. >> this tweet promoting something on fox news. >> paul ryan needs to step down. >> president donald trump just tweeted the following: mike flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt. >> when you are given immunity, that means you've probably committed a crime. >> i would love to see the tweeting stop, but i'd also like to see pigs fly. >> he did what he does most often. he started tweeting. >> the president of the united states tweeted this. james comey better hope there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press.

>> that's ain't threat. he simply stated a fact. the tweet speaks for itself. >> i wonder what his explanation is going to be this morning. the odd tweet that the president put out last night. apparently it speaks for itself. president trump is criticizing the mayor of london following this weekend's terror attack. the mayor of london says there is no reason to be alarmed. here's what he actually said. >> we'll see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days. no reason to be alarmed. >> quote, we need the courts to give us back our rights. we need the travel ban. >> he just basically gave the supreme court of the united states all the ammunition that they needed. >> are president trump's tweets considered official white house statements? >> the president is the president of the united states, so they are considered official statements by the president of the united states. >> he's commenting, again, he can't stop himself, on special counsel robert mueller's investigation he tweeted. they made up a phony collusion

with the russian story, found zero proof so now they go for obstruction of justice. nice! friday morning he posted, quote, i am being investigated for firing the fbi director by the man who told me to fire the fbi director. >> just ahead of today's deadline to turn over any tapes to the house intel committee, did anyone think there were tapes? >> i didn't tape, and i don't have any tape, and i didn't tape. >> the president tweeted, and i quote, i heard -- >> poorly rated "morning joe" speaks badly of me. don't watch anymore. >> and low iq crazy mika and psycho joe. >> she insisted on joining me. >> she was bleeding badly from a facelift. >> i said no. >> it's been fascinating and frightening and really sad for our country. president trump spent much of his weekend putting his message out on twitter, sending 19 tweets, and among the 10 he sent before 8:30 on saturday morning, all agree the u.s. president has

the complete power to pardon. >> yesterday the president tweeted, our beleagured rg banning serving in any capacity in north korea. >> the president tweeting, quote, military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded. >> the outdated filibuster rule must go. mitch m., go to 51 votes now. >> i said, mitch, get to work. >> so that's the president of the united states who tweeted out this. >> oh, come on. >> that mocking tweet by kim jong-un describing him as rocket man. >> lashing out to san juan, puerto rico from his country club. >> while he was golfing, the mayor of san juan, puerto rico was up to her neck in water, throwing paper towels at victims of the hurricane like it was a game. >> the tweets that trump made

undercut tillerson, telling him, save your energy, rex. >> let's go to the twitter desk and our own willie geist. >> do his tweets make your job more difficult, general kelly? >> no. >> happy halloween. scary day for a lot of people. >> sorry, but this is years ago before paul manafort was part of the trump campaign. but why aren't crooked hillary and the dems the focus? tweeting shortly before midnight, nyc terrorist should get death penalty. >> my twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. >> minutes later, schumer and pelosi pulled out of the media. >> president trump is busy this morning retweeting in quick succession a series of alarming videos. >> i'm not talking about the nature of the video. i think you're focusing on the wrong thing. >> president trump just tweeted,

lightweight senator kirsten gillibrand would come to the white house begging for campaign contributions. >> i think the president's tweets speak for themselves. up next, a story you're not going to want to miss. this is the story of a tough tea party activist and a liberal writer who somehow found a way to share lives, laughs in an unlikely friendship in the age of trump. stay tuned for this one, folks. this is "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc.

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in the current political climate, it can be hard to find common ground with those who don't share our views. but in the case of one liberal writer and a hard-nosed tea party activist, the two managed to develop an unlikely friendship that grew stronger when they were faced with the biggest battle of their lives with castle. she recently wrote about her bond with the late robin stublin. this is an incredibly moving essay that you've written. i encourage everybody to go there and read it. i link it out there on twitter for everyone. mother jones we know is a liberal publication. robin, a tea party activist, set this up for us. who was he? tell us about this relationship. >> i first met robin when i was

covering the tea party movement back in its early days in 2009. and i think i just cold called him help had posted something on a tea party list about -- there was a competing tea party group going around the country claiming to be the tea party but it was run by a gop political action committee and a bunch of consultants. and so he had posted all this stuff about what they were doing and how they were raising money from people who thought it was a grassroots operation but then they were spending it on consultants and really expensive continuers at steakhouses and things like that and he was really outraged about it. he posted the stuff on list serve and i saw it and i called him and thought this guy's never going to talk to me from mother jones but actually he wanted to get his story out happened wanted people to know they shouldn't give money to this group because it wasn't going to the grassroots. from there on out, i talked to robin all the time about tea

party stuff, about politics. he appeared in the pages of mother jones probably a dozen times. commenting on various things about tea party issues. and he -- >> yes, stephanie, i think what's so striking about this story is this is not a case of somebody who -- he's an ex-conservative who suddenly is telling, you know, secrets -- you guys had just vehement disagreements on everything. and yet you were able to create a perm personal bond. >> robin was a good guy. i've gotten strange messages from people saying i'm like a traitor and how could i be friends with this person. robin and i didn't agree on a lot of things about politics. we fought about obamacare. we fought about hillary clinton. we fought about oil drilling off the coast of florida. which he was in favor of. we argued about this stuff as much as we talked.

but i think that -- even now, i'm sorry, i'm trying not to cry because i really miss those conversations with him and they helped me in a lot of ways to just understand another point of view. and i think he felt the same way about me. and he had a good sense of humor. there weren't a lot of things that we agreed on. he wasn't a big -- he didn't think that the tea party movement should be about social issues. so he wasn't really outspoken about, like, abortion or gay marriage so that made it easier on some level that we didn't have to talk about that kind of stuff. but we managed to just find things to talk about that had nothing to do with politics. like camping. >> unfortunately, this ends in such a horrible coincidence, but you both discovered in the last year you had a cancer diagnosis. >> yes, that was the strange of the twist of fate. we were literally diagnosed with cancer a week apart. he was diagnosed in april with

esophageal cancer and a week later i was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. and it -- all of a sudden, we had a lot to talk about that had nothing to do with politics. i used to joke in the office that no one would believe me, but my cancer buddy was a 60-year-old tea party activist in florida. but that's really what it was. and, you know, robin called and checked on me and sent me texts and facebook messages almost every other day just to see how i was doing. right up until about two weeks before he died. >> and he unfortunately passed away just within the last couple of weeks. how are you doing now? >> i'm fine. you know, as fine as you can be i think. under the circumstances. but robin had a -- he had a rough go of things. and i think -- he's -- you know,

it came much faster than we thought it would. i really didn't get to say good-bye. i'm very sad about it. >> stephanie, i really appreciate you coming on, sharing your story. i encourage everybody to go read it. not just to read your story but maybe keep it in mind the next time they're on facebook or twitter or social media and you see somebody on there who's saying something you disagree with and there's that instinct to just demonize them and say what a terrible person they are. i think your story's a reminder. there's so much more we all have in common as human beings. there's always great relationships that can be made between anybody. i think it's just an incredible story. thank you. stephanie memseh from mother jones. we'll be right back.

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that does it for this edition of andrea mitchell reports. i'm see you back here tonight for hard ball. craig melvin is up knicks here on msnbc. >> craig melvin here at msnbc headquarters in new york. liar? reports of a new strategy from the trump legal team in the russia investigation. they plan to paint former ally turned star witness michael flynn as a liar. plus, last ditch effort. the final push from the roy moore campaign to stop his opponent now just hours before his win becomes offi