this sunday, race and this sunday, race and the president. at issue, president trump's racist comments disparaging immigrants from haiti and africa. democrats were quick to condemn. >> that's when he used the vile and vulgar comments calling the nations they come from [ bleep ] holes. >> it was racist, inappropriate, crude and loathsome. >> it must be in his dna. >> republican reaction ranges from we don't remember him saying that to disappointment.

>> very unfortunate, unhelpful. >> he should take them back. i disagree with them completely. >> today -- >> i speak a little salty behind closed doors as well. >> was this just salty language, or did the president just reveal his true feelings? >> i'll ask rand paul and democratic senator michael bennett of colorado. plus civil rights leader andrew young has offered olive branches to president trump in the past. what about now? ambassador young joins us this morning. and war games. why did hawaiians get a message that a ballistic missile threat was inbound? it wasn't a drill. it was a mistake. the dangers of instant communication in the nuclear age. joining me for insight and analysis are nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell, helene cooper pentagon correspondent for "the new york times." david brody from the christian broadcasting network and msnbc political analyst elise jordan.

welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." >> from nbc news in washington, the longest running television show in history. this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. >> good sunday morning. a week that began with president trump feeling he needed to prove he was mentally fit to handle his job ended with him facing charges that he is a racist. just asking that question -- is the president of the united states of america a racist? it's deeply uncomfortable. it's an issue being openly discussed. a measure of how widespread the reaction has been to his s-hole comments about african countries can be seen in newspaper headlines around the country. the issue is not whether he used salty language. most presidents do. the issue is the sentiment behind that language, including the norway comment. this week's comments have left the president forced to address a very uncomfortable question. >> mr. president, are you a racist?

>> reporter: president trump ignoring questions at an mlk day event on friday after railing against african immigrants from s-hole countries at a closed-door immigration meeting, suggesting that the u.s. should accept more people from places like norway. >> that's when he used these vile and vulgar comments, calling the nations they come from [ bleep ]. >> the president took to twitter with a vague partial denial saying his comments at the meeting were, quote, tough but this was not the language used. but a source close to president told nbc news, quote, he frequently uses that kind of language. "the new york times" reported last month in june the president told advisers that immigrants from haiti all have aids and said that once they had seen the united states, nigerian immigrants would never go back to their huts. those comments in private should not be a surprise given what the president has said in public. >> why aren't we letting people in from europe? i have many friends, many, many friends, and nobody wants to

talk this, nobody wants to say it. >> mr. trump has a history of racially charged episodes that dates back more than four decades. in 1973 the justice department sued mr. trump and his father for discriminating against african-american applicants for rental units. mr. trump re-entered national politics by leading the so-called birther movement. >> he gave a birth certificate. whether or not that was a real certificate, because a lot of people question it, i certainly question it. >> he launched his presidential campaign on the idea that immigrants from mexico were rapists. >> they're bringing drugs. they're bringing crime. they're rapists. and some i assume are good people. >> and insisted that those who resisted white supremacists and neo-nazis in charlottesville were equally to blame. >> you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. >> on friday, the reaction from republicans was muted with most republican leaders declining to comment. two republican senators in the

meeting put out a statement saying they do not recall the president saying these comments specifically. another, senator lindsey graham, indirectly confirmed them, making it clear in a statement that following comments by the president, i said my piece directly to him. and some republicans did condemn the comments outright. >> totally inappropriate. he should apologize. >> first thing that came to my mind was very unfortunate, unhelpful. >> that is not the kind of statement the leader of the free world ought to make and he ought to be ashamed of himself. >> but senate candidates in arizona and ohio who are nervous about mr. trump's base in the primary defended the president. >> i speak a little salty behind closed doors at times as well, and so i'm not going to throw the first tone on using any language. >> i've said all along the president many times says what people are thinking. >> joining me from bowling green, kentucky, republican senator rand paul. senator paul, welcome back to "meet the press," sir. >> good morning. >> during the campaign you lamented the fact that when you got into the race you were doing

things like speaking at howard, trying to show -- expand the tent of the republican party and try to beat back this stereotype about the republican party, and you lamented at the time the language candidate trump had used. as president, when he's gone down these roads, you've actually pulled back and you've not gone after him for specific comments. you've hit him on policy but not comments. where are you on this? >> you know, i don't think the comments were constructive at all, but i also think that to be fair we shouldn't draw conclusions that he didn't intend. i know personally about his feelings towards haiti and toward central america because when i was not a candidate for president and he wasn't a candidate for president i went down there on a medical mission trip, i did about 200 cataract surgeries with a group of surgeons in haiti and the same in central america, and when we asked donald j. trump as private citizen to support those trips

he was a large financial backer of both medical mission trips. so it's unfair to draw conclusions from a remark that i think wasn't constructive is the least we can say, and it's unfair to all of a sudden paint him as he's a racist when i know for a fact he cares deeply about the people in haiti because he helped to finance a trip and we were able to get vision back to 200 people in haiti. >> are you more disturbed, though, by the comment -- it's less about the vulgarity and more he seemed to say why can't we have immigrants from norway as opposed to african-american countries? many nonwhite americans here, oh, so he wants white people, not black people. >> right. but i think people jumped a little to a conclusion. let's take the whole scenario and put different word in there. let's say we'd rather have people from economically prosperous countries rather than economically deprived countries or realize there are more problems in economically deprived countries so there's a bigger impetus for them to come.

there still would have been some controversy but not as much. what i can say is if you do a poll and one of the world-wide polling companies did this, asked people who would like to come to america, about 700 million would come next year and we'd double our population. so practically we're a great place. and practically we do have to limit it. if you look at where they'd rather come from, if you live in a poor country, you're more likely to come than if you live in england or norway. >> that's the story of the united states, right? >> say again? >> that's the story of our country. >> it is the story of our country, but what i'm saying is you can see why there are more people wanting to come from economically distressed areas and they can't all come, so it gets into the valid, legitimate debate over immigration as how do we choose? do we have a diversity lottery and take people from everywhere or base it more on merit? there are lot of questions that this ultimately intersects with policy. the only thing i regret from all of this other than some people

in the media have gone completely bonkers on the president, but i do regret is i want to see an immigration compromise and you can't it if everybody is calling the president a racist. they're destroying the setting, both side are destroying the setting in which anything meaningful can happen on immigration. >> that's where i want to segue. you said the word merit. the president this morning in a tweet said i as president want people coming to our country who will help us become strong and great again, people coming in through a system based on merit. no more lotteries. but define merit. based on a system of merit. is merit political asylum? is merit running away from poverty? what is merit? because that is an eye of the beholder word, sir. >> i think so. but i think a lot of it is intent to work and people who want to work. there are jobs of all different knowledge and skill level. so, for example, if you're a software engineer and you've got a ph.d. and you've gone to one of our universities, those are the kind of people that say oh my goodness, staple a green card to their diploma. sure, those are easy.

we also need people to pick tomatoes and work in the agricultural sector and there's merit to that also. if you come here and you're not doing to work, you have no merit. i would combine not only being selective but i would have a very significant work and sponsorship. in the old days maybe a 100 years, like when my wife's grandmother came here, you needed to work. if you didn't, you were sent home. there need to be tough so we select out for people who have strong work ethic. i would say, by the way, most immigrants who do come here have maybe better work ethic than some who are already here. >> that's actually usually been the case when it comes to first-generation immigrants. you seem to say democrats have to stop calling the president names. doesn't the president owe an apology for some of this? look, mia love, the daughter of haitian immigrants, she wants an apology. he hasn't issued one. >> i'll tell you there are two different standards here.

in 2013, lindsey graham said the exact same thing the president did, used the word hellhole, we can't have everybody from every hellhole coming here. now everyone thinks that he's a great statesman because he puts out a statement about american ideals and stuff. a good statement, but he said almost the identical thing to the president in 2013. so i think we have a selective remembering and we've decided that -- and people have -- >> wait, wait, wait. hasn't the president earned -- wait. but senator, hasn't the president earned this skepticism on his own? i mean, he's the one tweeting these remarks. >> he has often not helped his case, and i think if he were to further explain or try to explain and maybe not use such coarse language, it wouldn't be this way. if we were to have a debate on whether or not we could have an open border with every economically deprived country, that is a valid debate, and people are driven here by poverty, but we can't have an open border with everyone who wants to come. we end up having to have rules on our border. we have to be somewhat selective on who comes. so i think there was a valid argument in there, but you got

sort of queen saltiness coming out, and then i think people misinterpreted he's a racist. but i can tell you that when i went to haiti and was doing a medical mission trip, he was very concerned about those in haiti and wanted to help them restore their vision. >> i want to ask where you are on the various compromises that are out there. i'll put up a quick graphic. there's a difference between the compromise bill in the senate, lindsey graham and dick durbin presented the compromise there. on the left, additional money for border security, d.r.e.a.m.ers and their parents, they would be protected but no citizenship. diversity, lottery ended, but those slots reallocated. can you support something like that, or do you think that's too open borders for your taste? >> i can support a compromise, and in fact i've been offering to the democrats a compromise for about six months that they've turned their head and sniffed at and said, oh, no, we don't have to give up anything, we're just going to get what we want. my compromise all along is those here, their parents brought them here illegally, we could

internally immigrate them, count them against the normal totals. so next year, a million people will come and if you had 200,000 d.r.e.a.m.er kids, the totals are a million anyway. immigration totals aren't going up, they're staying the same. you're internally immigrating people who are here. i think that's a compromise. the democrats have sniffed at that and said we want our d.r.e.a.m.er act without anything. i think the president has changed the dynamic. there is going to be the d.r.e.a.m.ers are going to get naturalized, but there will have to be something for border security, and it has to be real and it hassing to significant. a lot of people -- going back to '86, when people said there would be border security and it would come later, it never comes. >> that is an argument we have heard for a long time. senator paul, i appreciate that. it's going to be perfect timing because i'll get somebody from the other side of the aisle to respond to that, so i appreciate you coming on and sharing your views, sir. >> thank you. >> from the other side of the

aisle, a part of that bipartisan deal i just asked senator paul about, it's democratic senator michael bennett joining me from denver. welcome back to the show, sir. >> thanks for having me, chuck. >> i'll start where we just ended so the viewer can feel it. you heard senator paul's response avoiding taking a position on your compromise, offering up another version of a compromise, protecting the d.r.e.a.m.ers for straight-up even more border security. i've heard a version of that before, too, which is separate out all these other issues. you want to protect the d.r.e.a.m.ers, fine, let's do it, just for the wall and some version of the fence. what do you say to that? >> what i say is that he ought to look at the compromise that dick durbin, lindsey graham, and the rest of us have reached. it is a combination of border security, $1.6 billion the president asked for for his wall, an additional $1.1 billion for border security, and at the same time we're saying that we

should put the d.r.e.a.m.ers on a pathway to citizenship. there are other compromises, as well. this was a hard-fought negotiation over four months. i think that it's a middle-of-the-road approach that i hope that other colleagues will support. >> it addresses the immediate concern. you allocate an additional billion dollars to what was asked for by the president, but it's really a one-year -- his concern -- and i've heard this from others -- is no, allocate that border security money now so they know it's there. >> we will allocate it now. we are allocating it now in the bill. i was part of the gang of eight that negotiated the immigration bill in the senate that got 68 votes, which if the house had ever put it on the floor would have passed. and i think we wouldn't be in all this nonsense we're in right now. that bill, which was democrats and republicans together, the first provisions of that bill were border security. i think we put $40 billion of border security in that bill. so this idea that somehow

democrats aren't interested in border security is demonstrably false, and we should just stop talking about it and get on with it. >> a lot of democrats simply want to say, you know what, don't try to compromise, this should be a clean d.r.e.a.m. act, nothing else. let me play a few clips on that. >> what i was glad to see is that we are moving forward on getting a clean d.r.e.a.m. act. >> we need to pass a clean d.r.e.a.m. act. >> if you are a democrat who doesn't like a clean d.r.e.a.m. act, you're going to have some problems. and don't count on me to protect you. you're on your own with that. >> that last comment was the deputy chair of the democratic party, senator, saying eventually compromising on daca with border security is somehow a negative litmus test inside the democratic party. what do you say to that? >> what i say is that, look, i am for a clean d.r.e.a.m. act.

i've been one of the first co-sponsors of the d.r.e.a.m. act. as i said earlier, the gang of eight immigration bill we passed earlier had a great d.r.e.a.m. act, but it also had border security. and i think it's recognition that unfortunately the republicans have a majority in the house, the republicans have a majority in the senate, and we have a republican president who doesn't seem to appreciate the contribution that immigrants make to this country. and i think the agreement that lindsey graham and dick durbin and the rest of us have reached is a principled compromise, and i hope people will explore it. there should be more of that in washington, not less, in my view. >> a lot of democrats have come to the conclusion that the president is a racist after the previous comments. and they point to a series of things he has said over decades, not just as president. is that a fair conclusion? >> i was raised not to call people a racist on the theory that it was hard for them to be rehabilitated once you said that, but there's no question what he said was racist. there's no question what he said was un-american and completely unmoored from the facts.

he seems to have this impression that immigrants to the united states, like my mom and her parents who are polish jews who came here after the holocaust, some have come to the united states and just are lazy, and the truth is exactly the opposite. you spend any time in neighborhoods across colorado, what you find is immigrants here striving to make this country better, provide for their families and for the next generation. so i think he has no idea what he's talking about. and on the question of what's in his heart, do you have any thought, chuck, that he would have called into question barack obama's birth certificate if barack obama were white? >> that's been an open question on that debate for a long time. let me ask you this about the view of working with president trump in general. there are many democrats, and i'm sure you hear from them, that say stop, you're enabling him when you work with him. what do you say to that? >> this is a trying time in the country. i could never have imagined that

we would have elected donald trump or someone like donald trump president. and i still worry about what that says about where we are as a democratic republic. but having said that, we need to work for the benefit of this country, its place in the world, for the next generation of americans. and this immigration compromise is a very good example of that. donald trump delineated four issues that he thought had to be dealt with in this immigration bill -- daca, border security, what he calls chain migration, and diversity visas. those four things are dealt with in our bill because it's a recognition that he was elected president of the united states. but we still have an obligation to do the right thing for the country, and we'll continue to try to do that. i think it's incumbent on the members of congress, whether democrats or republicans, to elevate the things that really make us special as a country, including our commitment to being a nation of immigrants but

also our commitment to the rule of law. and both of those things are at work in this compromise we've made in the senate around immigration. >> you said these are trying times and you worry we won't recover. i mean, that's -- i don't want to say that's apocalyptic, too strong a description, but that's pretty demoralizing and so i guess the question is, you're an elected official, what's your obligation to do something about this? >> well, i think -- i think every elected official and frankly every american has an obligation to do something about this. we are a nation of immigrants. we are committed to the rule of law. the founding fathers, when they set this country up, knew they were setting up something that had never existed before in human history, which was a democratic republic. we would be self-governing. and they knew as a definitional matter that we would have disagreements. and they set up a bunch of very elegant mechanisms for us to resolve those disagreements. and it's now up to our

generation to decide whether we're going to destroy those mechanisms, whether we're going to have unprincipled disagreements in washington that actually don't advance the interests of the american people or the interests of this republic or establish us as the example that we've set over generations, making that republic more democratic over time, when we're in a world filled with sectarian violence, people can't get along with each other, whether we're going to set that example. america needs to be that example. so i'm not apocalyptic about it, but we have to take our obligations as citizens and as elected officials very seriously in this moment in our history just as people have done at very important inflection points all across the history of this country. >> before i let you go, is it worth shutting down the government if a daca compromise doesn't happen? >> chuck, i hope it doesn't come to that. i think that --

>> but is it worth it? it is potentially worth it? >> it should not come to that. we should stop shutting this government down. and we should start doing the work the american people sent us to washington to do. chuck, we have not passed a real budget for the ten years that i've been in the senate. >> i know. i know. >> we've had 30 continuing resolutions. it's a joke. >> okay. >> and places like china and iran and north korea are not waiting for us to figure out this potemkin politics that we are having. it's time for us to pull together as americans, as the sons and daughters of immigrants, and do what our parents and grandparents did for us. that's what we need to do for our kids. >> senator bennett, appreciate it. i wish i could go further, but i'm running out of time. i appreciate you coming on and sharing your views. >> thanks, chuck. later in the broadcast, the ballistic missile warning in hawaii yesterday for something that was a mistake. why did so many people believe it felt so real? up next, more on president trump's comments and this question -- are there a lot of americans who agree with what he said?

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back now with the panel. helene cooper from "the new york times," elise jordan, andrea mitchell, and david brody from the christian broadcasting network. welcome. one of the reasons president trump's immigration comments landed with such force this week is because the president has a long history of making provocative statements on the subject of race. here's just a little sample. >> that a well-educated black person, male or female, has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white person. why doesn't he show his birth certificate? why aren't we letting people in from europe? a total and complete shutdown of muslims entering the united states. i don't know anything about david duke, okay? you wouldn't want me to condemn a group that i know nothing about. look at my african-american over here. this judge is of mexican heritage. i'm building a wall. african-americans, hispanics are

living in hell because it's so dangerous. you walk down the street, you get shot. >> do you want to include the congressional black caucus and the congressional -- >> i would. you want to set up the meeting? do you want to set up the meeting? >> no, no, no. >> are they friends of yours? set up the meeting. get that son of a bitch off the field right now. out. he's fired. he's fired! >> some people would say i did a montage of dog whistles from the president. >> yeah. i feel like you just played that to wind me up. wow. this has been -- i mean, i think this has been really sad in a lot of ways. i feel like we've crossed the point now as this country when you look at our image abroad internationally, this country has always been seen as a nation of immigrants, and i'm one of them, coming from liberia, which i guess would qualify for one of those african countries that president trump disparaged earlier last week.

what i find really disturbing -- take president trump aside, because i think this is the sort of thing we expect from him, but what i find really upsetting about this is that for so many years i felt like i'm such a proud american. i feel very much like this is my country. but i also feel -- one of the reasons i've always felt proud is because this is a country where when my family left liberia when i was 14 years old, we could have gone anywhere, but i would have never gotten to the point i've gotten in my life if we went somewhere other than the united states. i never would have become a "new york times" reporter. it would have been a whole lot harder if we went to europe or something like that. and that's always made me proud of this country, that this is a country you can come to with nothing and make something of yourself. and i feel like we're starting to lose that, and i can't begin to describe just how upsetting that can be personally but just

how much damage that can do to the united states around the world and how other people look at us. >> elise, you one time worked for rand paul, once a future presidential candidate, and this was a guy trying to symbolize his candidacy by showing up at howard, by talking about criminal justice reform. he was trying to get rid of the stereotype of the big tent. yet senator rand paul there was trying to give the president the benefit of the doubt. why is that? >> i think that republicans are put in a terrible position right now of having hitched their wagon with donald trump and then having to spend time cleaning up after his constant missteps. and in this case just completely -- language you cannot justify, and it is just not fitting for an american president to go out into the world and represent our country talking this way about other nations that we need as allies, that just for practical security reasons we need other -- we

shouldn't unnecessarily antagonize an entire continent. and unfortunately, that's what donald trump was hellbent on doing this week. >> you know, i'm looking at this clip. you could say that he had me at the birth certificate. how much evidence do we need? and i'm not, you know, one to use labels, but it is so upsetting to all of us who come from families of immigrants, particularly people of color, to children. and i was really struck by something -- well, first of all, paul ryan in the moment saying it was, you know, unfortunate and unhelpful and rand paul trying to make those excuses today. republican leaders and other who refuse to call what it is by its name and speak to the ugliness. philip ken akof in the "the washington post" yesterday had a very compelling analysis of this.

he combined what he and others who did not walk out of a dinner party, if you hear an anti-semitic comment, if you don't call it out, to what happened in maryland when the university of maryland hospital put a naked woman in a hospital gown and socks in 3-degree weather on the street close to midnight. just patient dumping. something is wrong with our culture, and it starts at the top. the leader of the free world, the leader of our country, needs to show compassion and humanity. and that filters down at every level of society and it teaches our children and that's what really bothers me. >> you know, the view within the base, and not just the trump base but really more than the trump base, because face it, if it was just the trump base, he wouldn't be president of the united states today. there's more than the trump base. just because you're politically incorrect and boy is that all bold in a 16 font doesn't mean you're a racist. i think there is a disconnect between what the media is saying in terms of he's got to be a racist and the way he operates, born in 1946, a bit old school, and i know that scares folks,

but old school and politically incorrect. you put it through the trump meter if you will trying to understand and dissect it, look, i've done 15 interviews with him since 2011, i think i have some standing to say what he's about, but more importantly, his family. not just his family, but people who are close to him that wouldn't necessarily be blood supporters of him say this is not the donald trump that's being described in the media. then why doesn't he do something about it? why doesn't he himself fix his own image? he is very media savvy. he seems not to want to correct this. >> a few things going on. when he's talking about these countries, he is talking about economic conditions. let me give you an example of that. if norway was in disastrous straits, for example, a bunch of white people in norway, he would say the exact same thing. people say he wouldn't say the same thing, but he would. he looks at it through an economic prism. that's his brain, i can build it better, i see economic conditions and we have to fix this out. >> can i say something about

politics? he has not tweeted or said anything that i know of about the disaster in california, the earth -- the mudslides. this is a democratic state, the bluest state that we have perhaps. why does he not feel compassionate for humanity the way he does for disasters in texas? >> elise? >> i would like to push back a little bit on the premise of he's discussing the economic conditions and it isn't anything with racial implications. certainly plenty of americans, both democratic and republican, you know, implemented the marshall plan, have reached out to other countries. they didn't go out of their way to alienate and antagonize them the way donald trump has by using this kind of incendiary language that has become a culture of cruelty that far supersedes any kind of partisanship. >> not to mention that there are many, many, many countries that have far more diverse populations than norway that are doing fantastically economically. he picked the whitest one that

he could possibly find to make it -- >> don't forget, it was just because he had been -- go ahead and respond and i'm going to take a break. >> they look at these media headlines and see the clip, the montage you played, but what was not in the montage in 1986, donald trump won an ellis island award for diversity and tolerance. who was with him on that stage? rosa parks. so if we're going to have a montage, we probably should include some of that. i'm not saying that defends what he did. what i'm saying is that's why there's a lot of distrust in the media today. >> that's a good place to pause this conversation. guests are coming back, i promise. when we come back on this martin luther king jr. weekend, we'll talk to a prominent civil rights leader in our history, andrew young. about president trump's remarks and the legacy of racism in the united states. ontrol. i need to cut my a1c. weekends are my time. i need an insulin that fits my schedule. ♪ tresiba® ready ♪ (announcer) tresiba® is used

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muscle or nerve conditions, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. with the botox® savings program, most people with commercial insurance pay nothing out-of-pocket. talk to your doctor and visit botox®cmsavings.com to enroll. welcome back. my next guest, andrew young, has been one of the leading voices in the civil rights movement for decades. he was executive director of the southern christian leadership conference, working closely with dr. martin luther king. later he served as a u.s. ambassador to the united nations, a congressman, and of course a two-term mayor of atlanta.

when we last had ambassador young on "meet the press," it was a week after after white nationalists rallied in charlottesville in august, rutting in violence and the death of a counterprotester. at the time, ambassador young seemed to want to give president trump the benefit of the doubt about what was in his heart after the president said there were very fine people on both sides of the confrontation. so we were curious especially on martin luther king jr. weekend, about the president's comments this week. welcome back to "meet the press." >> thank you very much. >> some of your fellow travelers in the civil rights movement, john lewis, jesse jackson, martin luther king's son, have been pretty tough on the president. they said in response, he speaks like one who knows something about being a racist. he speaks like a racist. martin luther king jr. iii yesterday caused him to lose any level of credibility. all of them stopped short of calling the president a racist. where are you, sir? >> well, i'm of the opinion that we were born in a very

complex, multicultural situation. i prefer to use the term ethnosen terrorism because it goes way back and it doesn't help to put the label on any single person. dr. king said we were born in an unjust world, and none of us can take any virtue about being born black, white, liberal, or conservative. we have a difficult situation. it was proven to me when he came out of the meeting with senator goldberg at the u.n. with -- on vietnam and he refused to give any comment. and they asked him, well, what do you think of china? and he said, well, 800 million people are not going to disappear because we refuse to admit their existence. he was attacked by every single newspaper from washington to california, from chicago down to miami.

that was the climate of the time, and it was absolutely stupid. one of the things he said not related to that but which was quoted by the mayor of san juan, puerto rico, last night at the king dinner, was that martin luther king said that nothing is more dangerous in all the world than sincere ignorance and enthusiastic stupidity. >> yeah. >> and i think that's got to be applied to any one person, that that could be applied to both parties, it could be applied to just about every member of the house of representatives, that we don't really grasp the complexity of the times we're in, and we're trying to simplify and personalize it and that will not work. >> you know, it was interesting. manager -- martin luther king's

nephew who stood next to the president when he signed the proclamation on friday, isaac faris. afterwards walking out of the white house, he was asked to respond to this issue, is the president a racist. and he said this -- i think president trump is racially ignorant and racially uninformed, but i don't think he is a racist in the traditional sense. so basically backing up what you were saying. but how do you educate a 71-year-old man in donald trump on the issue of race? >> well, very easy. i think he's being educated. it's not a matter of educating donald trump. it's a matter of educating our entire society. getting president trump to be a saint is not going to change the employment situation. it's not going to change the global economy. it's not going to deal with the tensions between korea and the united states. this is a difficult world, and it doesn't help to label people. you know, you don't help someone who has an alcohol problem by constantly calling him a drunk. you have to deal with the

sickness. >> let me ask you this final question, then. is the president redeemable? >> let me tell you something, i'm a christian and all men sin and fall short of the glory of god, and women do too. and if we were not redeemable, we would not be committed to our lord and savior jesus christ as much as we are. we are committed because we are sinners that know we cannot make it on our own, and i think he's kind of got to realize that too. >> i think that's a pretty good way to end this. ambassador young, i always learn something when speaking with you, and i appreciate you coming on and sharing your views here on "meet the press," sir. >> well, god bless you. >> thank you, sir. when we come back, tangled up in blue. why more republican retirements this week have democrats are optimistic a blue wave may carry them to control congress in november. >> tech: at safelite autoglass

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we are back, "data download" time. only two weeks into the year, believe it or not, yet all eyes are already on the midterm elections this november. democrats need just 24 seats to take back control of the house, and boy, are they getting closer to achieving that goal. why? because a whopping 30 republican house members have already decided to leave congress. 18 are retiring outright, while the other 12 have decided to run for higher office. the old up or out move. and things look good for democrats to pick up at least some of these open seats. why? well, hillary clinton won five of these districts in 2016 and came within single digits in another five. these are places that are already trending democratic but good feelings about the incumbent likely cause many to split their tickets in the last election, and they vote differently with no incumbent in the race. then there's the demographic makeup of some of these districts. they show good signs for democrats as well in these open seats. for one, many of these open seats are from more racially diverse districts.

12 of the retirement districts are above the national average for their minority population, 38.7%. many of these places have growing latino communities, a group republicans already struggle with more so now with this president. 11 districts have population where more than 30% of those 25 or older have a bachelor's degree, higher than the national average. better educated voters like these have also been trending blue. finally, there's simply the geography. 15 of these 30 districts with retiring republicans are either in urban or suburban america, one more good sign for democrats who are already dominating the urban areas and seeing big gains in suburban america. as npr's jessica taylor noted, the last time we saw close to this many retirements in a midterm year was 1994, when 28 democrats decided to retire and the gop took control of the house by a big margin. so, so far we have 30 announced retirements, three just this

week, and we are not even out of january. don't be surprised if we hear of several more before the end of the month, let alone the end of the quarter. we'll be back in a moment "end game." and more on just how big the blue wave could turn out to be. and more hough big the blue wave could end up being. "end game" -- brought to the you by boeing -- continuing our mission to connect, protect, explore, and inspire. it takes a lot of work to run this business. but i really love it. i'm on the move all day long... and sometimes, i don't eat the way i should. so, i drink boost to get the nutrition i'm missing. boost high protein nutritional drink has 15 grams of protein to help maintain muscle and 26 essential vitamins and minerals, including calcium and vitamin d. all with a great taste. boost gives me everything i need... to be up for doing what i love. boost high protein be up for it

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boeing. continuing our mission to connect, protect, explore, and inspire. back now with "end game." before i get to campaign politics, we have to remind ourselves it's january 14th. it's only been 14 days, two weeks in this new year. david graham in "the atlantic" friday wrote the following -- here's the paradox. everyone from the president to his staff to the congress to the pundits to the people knows the current situation is a disaster but there's no way to end the current situation, until the end of 2020. the situation will remain much as it is with the president widely acknowledged to be dysfunctional and no way to change that. there is no exit. i found it fascinating, andrea, because no matter what your view of this president, you want him to succeed, you want him to fail, yet everybody feels the same -- stuck. >> and senator bennett actually acknowledging that. you have to work with him. he is the president that we have. the 25th amendment is a fiction because it requires a two-thirds vote of this cabinet. imagine this cabinet -- >> that was done for incapacitation purposes, not for something else, arguably. >> and to be quickly remedied if necessary by them taking over.

>> that's right. >> so that is not going to happen. impeachment unlikely and would tear the country apart again, and certainly unlikely with this house. not to expect that. what are the other options? there are no other realistic options. this is the situation we are in, and i kind of like what andy young said about, you don't keep telling an alcoholic you're a drunk. you work with it, and i guess that is the way they're going to have to work to avoid a government shutdown and come up with some kind of compromise. >> david brody, there is a relief valve every once in a while, every two years, called midterm elections. it looks like many americans may express their opinion then. >> for sure, and we'll find out about those suburban women we hear so much about. the white house can trot out the child care tax credit. they are looking at paid family leave as well. here's my point. what they need to do from a communications standpoint is really push that forward and make sure that's a common theme going into 2018 because

obviously, it is going to be challenging. i think the question is, how much water can be in the boat before the boat capsizes? and i think that will be crucial. >> elise, two weeks in, it feels like we're losing a member of congress on the republican side of the aisle about every couple of days. let me just put up here past house waves, the last three times congress changed hands. in 1994, republicans needed 41, they got 52. in 2006, democrats needed 16, they got 30. in 2010, republicans needed 40, they got 63. the point is, when a wave happens, it's always much bigger than necessary and that's what this smells like. >> the common strain of all of those years that the opposition party, that they were pulling double digit with independents, that the incumbent was unpopular by double digits, and you look at what's what is happen right now, donald trump being between 11% and 16%. so democrats are on track with those prior years. >> yeah. >> what i find interesting is wondering how president trump

behaves if he does end up with a democratic house or democratic house and senate. do we see a different president trump? do we see a president trump who's not anywhere near as the conservative right-wing person he's been. >> didn't we get it this week in a weird way, the schizophrenia of trump on immigration? one day a bill of love, then the next day is now, no daca. democrats don't want daca. that's what he's tweeting. >> immediately pointing out getting rave reviews for that stagy thing in the white house, immediately responds to the base when ann coulter and others go after him. he seems more worried about protecting that 30-something, 38% base than anything else. and that is not a realistic strategy. >> speaking about 38% base, david graham used the word dysfunctional. look, in that base world and an evangelical world for sure, the word is functional, not dysfunctional, and that's the disconnect, and that's what people didn't pick up on in 2016. and you wonder if that same narrative isn't continuing. >> all right. helene, your beat is the pentagon.

andrea, your beat is the national security here at nbc. hawaiians were woken up in the morning to this alarming thing. it turned out to be the mistake of somebody in hawaii's state emergency management. but there are a lot of -- thousands of people who took it very seriously and, understandably so, but, boy, this is a wake-up call to when we live in the nuclear age, the speed of communications and the atmosphere. >> it really is. it's so frightening. many of us knew pretty early on that this was not actually a ballistic missile. >> not hawaiians. >> not hawaiians. in the climate that we're in right now, given the sort of rhetoric, even though it's calmed down considerably with these talks between seoul and pyongyang, it still was a really scary thing. and there's the sort of thing that you just can't get wrong, but it's very easy to get wrong. >> in terms of instantaneous communications, the one thing you worry about, and i got the call instantly and was calling intelligence officials and

getting the all-clear very quickly, but what kind of response -- is there a military response if someone in the chain of command believes there's an error or believes that there is a rogue in the rogue regime. there is some element not wanting these talks. you really can't absolutely be sure unless you have clear intelligence, clear lines of communication. congress is going to hold hearings. the fcc is going to do an examination. but we really have to upgrade our responses because this is the first real misfire on a system that was put in in 2012 to have cell phone notifications, and that's what made the difference here. >> when you think of the chain reaction that could have sparked, where the united states thinks they're under attack and they retaliate, and you think about people in seoul and in japan, people in south korea at that point, you could be at defcon whatever in seconds. >> especially since we have a president who we know tweets based on what's on "fox &

friends" sometimes. the timing of it, that has been a concern to some. >> this all comes back to twitter and comes back to, can this president use his twitter feed in a responsible manner? and this past week it didn't even seem that way because he was pretty all over the place and then the first day of the new year, the first official day of business, he's taunting kim jong-un. white house officials are desperate for him to stop personalizing his spat with kim jong-un, to make it about negotiations and not about his personal beef. >> good luck with that. >> maybe a little less executive time might be in the offing. anyway, thank you very much. and thank all of you for watching us as well. we'll be back next week because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." >> you can see more "end game" and "postgame" on the "meet the press" facebook page.

tonight -- there is no agreement on how to fix daca. no plan to keep the government opened. but at least there's no ballistic missile inbound to hawaii. this is "kasie dc." ♪ welcome to "kasie dc." i'm kasie hunt. we are live from washington every sunday from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. eastern time. tonight, i sit down with republican senator jeff flake who is leading the charge on daca. and he's about to take to the senate floor to scold the president for how he treats the media. plus, an exclusive interview with freedom