i think it's safe to say there's been a disappointing week. >> understatement of the year from senator mitch mcconnell. this is "kasie d.c." ♪ ♪ welcome to "kasie d.c." we are live every sunday from washington 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. eastern. tonight conflating tragedy and political expediency. plus, reports just in tonight of a new plea deal in the mueller investigation. and later on, he was secretary of education under president obama. we'll get arne duncan's opinion on how to return safety to the

school. this latest chapter has left students taking matters into their own hands because the adults in washington won't act. but first, in the wake of tragedy, on thursday president trump sought to set the emotional tone for a nation coming to grips once again with a mass shooting. >> to every parent, teacher and child who is hurting so badly, we are here for you, whatever you need, whatever we can do to ease your pain. we are all joined together as one american family. and your suffering is our burden also. it is not enough to simply take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference. we must actually make that difference. >> the president traveled to florida visiting with survivors,

posing for photos, and flashing a thumbs up. but all of that was swept aside by a wave of tweets late last night and early this morning. there were tweets about fake news, polsters, even nascar. and then there was this one. quote, very sad that the fbi missed all of the many signals sent out by the florida school shooter. this is not acceptable. they are spending too much time trying to prove russian collusion with the trump campaign -- there are no collusion. get back to the basics and make us all proud. and if you have to ask what changed, well, the answer most likely this. >> the defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the united states. the indictment alleges the russian conspirators want to promote discord in the united states and undermine public confidence in democracy. we must not allow them to succeed. >> the president tweeting this

morning, quote, if it was the goal of russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the u.s., then with all of the committee hearings, investigations and party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. they are laughing their butts off in moscow. get smart, america. and so the mueller investigation marches on. now the los angeles times reports rick gates will take a plea deal, though nbc has yet to confirm that. joining us tonight, to get smart, republican strategist and political analyst rick tyler. staff writer for the atlantic julia. ken dilanian and political reporter for "the new york times," ken vogel. thank you all for joining us on what has been really an off the wall news weekend quite frankly. rick tyler, i want to start with you. can you put the president in context here? i mean, this indictment comes

out -- [ laughter ] >> you know, there are 13 -- >> sure. >> please. but in seriousness, this is an indictment that outlines a foreign power attempting to fundamentally change what is the most important central tenet of our system of government, and the president is focused instead on his own political campaign. >> yeah, he's doing two things at once. one, by saying there's no collusion, which this indictment doesn't prove there's collusion or no collusion. what he's doing is validating the investigation because if he's hanging his hat on there's no collusion, he means he believes this is a legitimate investigation. while at the same time he's trying to dee legitimatize it over here. but at some future date if there is proven collusion between him or his campaign staffers, people are going to go back and say, but mr. president, you said there was no collusion here. you validated this investigation. so, the president once again is

sending a lot of mixed signals. >> yeah. well, what we've come to expect from this president. julia, can you put into context you as somebody who has spent so much time reporting on, what did you learn from the mueller indictment about what russia was doing, or did it all feel like he had essentially compiled what we had already known and just laid it out kind of point by point? >> it was a mix of both. he laid out a lot of what we knew both from domestic american reporting and russian reporting, which went into a lot of detail about how the troll factory works. publication named rbc did that earlier this year -- actually, no, end of last year. but he also uncovered a lot of new things about how much exactly it cost, about how each of these operations was done. i mean, the best detail about, you know, the cage and the hillary clinton look alike in the jump suit. this was very, very detailed. also, you now, we got things reporters couldn't have found or would have been very hard for reporters to find, like visa

violations and wire fraud and things like russian operatives -- >> prosecutor -- >> yeah. >> ken, you're nodding. >> subpoena envy. there is only so much we can do. there are only so many pieces we can put together. mueller, any prosecutor really, but particularly mueller has the ability to bring all of these things together and paint a full picture in a way that none of us could do. even as we saw little bits and pieces of it. i mean, to be able to get communications between some of these people who work for this internet association agency, troll factory as you put it, and americans, trump supporters as it says in the indictment, unwittingly communicating with them. i think a lot of people focused on that and looked at it as maybe some bread crumbs mueller was dropping, suggesting hey, there could be more here. so, to me i'm reading that, i'm thinking, i wouldn't go too hard on the no collusion thing. there are suggestions there there very well might be. >> ken?

>> i think we learned a lot from the indictment actually. we learned the scope of this cove vert vugs intelligence agency was broader. they were sending russian agents into the united states. they were interacting with americans, there was a budget of as much as 15 million a year. i mean, they were taking out ads on websites, not just social media trolling, and also mueller laid down a really important marker. there's been a question. is it a crime for americans to collude with a foreign power enter in t interfering in the election? he said there was a criminal conspiracy to defraud the united states. now any americans found to have participated in that could be guilty of the crime of conspiracy. >> ken dilanian, hold that thought. there are two of you. two kens sitting next to each other. as we mentioned we want to get to the story, the los angeles times reporting rick gates will plead guilty to fraud-related charges within days. the paper cites a person with direct knowledge of the developments and who says gates has made clear to prosecutors that he would testify against

paul manafort. nbc news has not independently confirmed the report, which also says the change of plea could come as we said in the next few days. gates already saw much of his legal team depart recently, and on friday federal prosecutors indicated in court documents they had new evidence against paul manafort of bank fraud. so, of course this is a change, ken dilanian, from where we were before rick gates was going to plead not guilty. put this -- essentially, he's going to be building a case against his former boss, we think. >> yeah, in part. this would be a very significant development if true. first because he was paul manafort's right hand man for years. presumably he really helps the case against manafort. and the goal of the mueller investigation most people believe is to have manafort plead guilty and cooperate. this would move the ball in that direction. don't forget, rick gates stayed around trump world long after paul manafort left. he was raising money for the inaugural. he was there a long time. he may know other things that could be helpful to the investigation. >> rick tyler, how much danger

is there here for manafort? i mean he's obviously someone the president has said, oh, you know, he only worked on my campaign for a little bit of time. he wasn't really a big deal. he was of course the campaign chairman. he points out gates was there. >> manafort is in trouble. his activity is proven in the election. just the fact the indictments, he had a multi count indictment against him and none of it has to do with the election. i'm not so sure it's all -- i'm not sure they need manafort. i think gates is a pretty big fish. he was senior official in the campaign. he was fairly senior in the administration. so you have that, you have the national security advisor, you have a fuller -- another foreign policy advisor. you have all these guilty pleas. and people all around. so, the circle is just getting smaller and smaller and smaller and it's getting much -- very uncomfortably close to the president. >> tighter. you mentioned a former national

security advisor. i want to talk a little bit about the current one because the russia investigation is putting president trump at odds with his current national security advisor. things came to a head yesterday when general h.r. mcmaster said this about friday's indictments of 13 russians. >> and as you can see with the fbi indictment, the evidence is now really incontroefrtable and available in the public domain. >> you will be surprised to learn that the president took to twitter to address general mcmaster saying, quote, 9:00 mcmaster forgot to say the results of the 2016 election were not impacted by the russians and that the only collusion was between russia and crooked h., the dnc and the dems. remember the dirty dossier and the podesta company. by the way, david sanger of "the new york times" reports tonight secretary jim mattis and cia director mike pompeo also attending the munich conference and in private meetings with others, they reiterated similar

statements as mcmaster. so, julia, this is on the one hand the president's security team saying the russians essentially it's the russians are bad on the one hand and the president is saying, well, all i know is all i'm paying attention to is there is no collusion. >> it is part and parcel of his general approach, which is toss overboard anybody who throws any shade at him, right? and we've seen this happen again and again. i'm thinking back to last summer, for example, aspen security conference where a lot of trump administration officials, dan coates, mike pompeo, yeah, we know there was russian interference in the election. we have proof. and this is probably not going to stop. and the question i kept wanting to ask is, are you guys talking to your boss? >> 48 hours after the justice department told us about a covert operation that the russians mounted against our election, the president of the united states has not told us how he plans to respond, how he plans to prevent it from happening again. don't forget, some of the same

intelligence officials were on the hill last week telling us the russians are continuing to medal in our politics. they're going to attack the 2018 mid terms. what is the president doing about it? >> you know what i wonder? all this conversation about russia meddling in 2018 continues to mount, if republicans then use it to say, well, see, all these democrats that won, you know, we think are going to win seats in 2018, that was all collusion with the russians. >> it is a politically viable path for them to take, which is seizing on the russian efforts to sow dissent. trump i think articulated this fairly well in the first tweet that you showed, saying it's not about me. it's not about them trying to elect me, even though there is some evidence that they did certainly favor him over hillary. >> eventually. >> it was more about the efforts to so werw miss cord in the amen political system. even after trump is president, if they season that and launch an effort on the hill to try to

heighten these efforts to prevent future meddling, i think that would be a way for them to say, we are taking this seriously. instead he just continues to brush it aside and that is sort of harder for him to justify with what his own national security team is saying. >> in the last tweet he went on to say that the russians didn't have any influence. that is simply not true. the fact that they didn't -- maybe they didn't break in and change ballot counts like that, but as a campaign professional, you've got 13 operatives and a multi-million dollar budget and you're advertising like crazy. of course it had an effect. it is unquantifiable whether it would change the election, but it clearly had an effect. >> the piece of this, julia, that i keep -- that i keep tripping over is this man is the commander in chief and there doesn't -- he doesn't seem to have taken -- it is obvious to say he hasn't taken a step from being candidate to president. in this case the stakes are so incredibly high. >> i feel like we say this every week. every week something happens that he doesn't like and he

attacks the fbi or the justice department or some other, you know -- remember when he attacked the judiciary. >> right. >> i don't think anything matters to him but him and his own personal reputation and his butt. >> so, the question here, greater question i'm interested in is how all of this online activity found its way into our real lives. so, following the indictment filed by robert mueller, "the new york times" published a report detailing the nature of russian election infiltration online. the times writes, quote, around mid 2015, the russians began buying digital ads to spread their messages. a year later, they tapped their followers to help organize political rallies across the united states. nbc's les field and indicate list katie engel heart introduced documentaries how one small town in idaho was hit with that exact kind of russian influence. >> in 2016 there was this facebook event advertised in

twin falls, idaho. an anti-refugee, anti-muslim political rally apparently organized online by a group of locals. the town of twin falls idaho becoming the center of refugee reset almighty led to the upsurge the violence towards american citizens. we must stop taking in muslim refugees. exclamation point. only recently, facebook revealed the event actually came from a fake account with ties to the kremlin. >> engel heart notes the twin falls group was trying to target residents like this man who runs a local group seeking to end refugee reset lment. >> the facebook group, secure borders, appears to be recognized by russia. the daily beast and new york times, that russia was using social media to interfere politically? do you believe it? >> i really don't believe the russians had any legal involvement. i mean, they have rt and

network. i'm sure you're familiar with. i do go online and watch rt occasionally. >> you know it's like a russian-government backed news organization? >> yes, it's funded and backed by the russian government. >> i'd like to point out that documentary series is called "after truth" which seems to be the world we're living in if you list tone what that gentleman was essentially saying. this is a situation where, yes, we think of it as online -- i'm scrolling through my facebook news feed. i'm seeing something the russians are trying to influence my thinking, like i might go buy a pair of shoes. but this was russian-backed efforts that led people to take actual actions that seemed like a connection. it seems just like a completely uncharted territory. the other thing i think we learned from the indictment, too, is how deeply facebook or potentially how much responsibility they might have

for all of this. >> it definitely shows the risk. it shows the blueprint that someone could follow to, you know, spending a lot of money and investing a lot in human resources to try to sow discord or even achieve a particular result in a given election campaign. that said, and i've heard julia talk about this, i don't think it was as sophisticated as we sort of, you know, not as the indictment, as we have received it. they tried, they tried to stage these rallies in florida and some of my former colleagues at politico went and looked at the press releases for these rallies. they're riddled with grammatical errors. there are questions about how many people actually turned out. so, they definitely tried. they spent a lot. they had a sophisticated operation, but as to whether the results were actually sophisticated and showed that, i think the jury is still out. >> what's your take on that, julia? >> i agree with ken vogel. i think it's kind of -- it's going to be impossible to

measure in general because they were, they were -- to some voters they were saying stay home. to some they were saying, come out and vote. i think what's interesting is that it shows us that this was just as much as it was a pro-donald trump operation, it was also an anti-hillary clinton operation because they also supported bernie sanders. they supported jill stein who sat at the same r.t. dinner next to mike flynn and vladimir putin. so this wasn't just to sow discord. it was very intimate between the two of them. >> hillary clinton and vladimir putin? >> and this gets at the russian response to the indictment, which has been, oh, and you guys never meddle in elections? what is national endowment for democracy do, what did you do in 1996 when russians were afraid the communists would take power five years after the collapse of the soviet union? a lot of american political consultants came to moscow and helped. you know, they see that -- they see our democracy promotion, our

toppling of saddam hussein and muammar qaddafi as part of basically what they did and they've been trying to say there is more than one, you know, regime change of game in town. >> fascinating. we are just getting started here on "kasie d.c." when we continue, we are going to talk about the devastating story from florida. there are signs of incremental change as students set up with waiting on the adults plan a march on washington. "kasie d.c." is back after this. for all the eyes that get itchy and watery near pugs. for all the people who sneeze around dust. there's flonase sensimist allergy relief. it relieves all your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills don't. it's more complete allergy relief. and all from a gentle mist you can barely feel. flonase sensimist helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. and 6 is greater than 1. flonase sensimist.

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you know, we lost 17 lives on valentine's day. that's supposed to be the international day of love. we're going to take the love that we got lost on wednesday and we're going to spread that over the next day, weeks, months, and maybe even years. the love you shared and continue to share is going to help us get through these trying times. i promise you, i will hug each and every one of you as many times as you need and i will hold you as long as you need me to for all 3300 of you and your families, and we will get through this together. >> that was the principal of stoneman douglas high school with an emotional message to his student body. and in the aftermath of wednesday's shooting, some of those students are taking action of their own. five of them have announced plans for a nationwide rally called for the end of next month. the march for our lives, as well as a demonstration here in washington, d.c. the announcement comes on the heels of yesterday's protests in

fort lauderdale, florida, where stoneman douglas high school senior emma gonzalez publicly warned of the consequence of doing nothing. >> maybe the adults have gotten used to saying, it is what it is, but it's us students have learned anything it's if you don't study you will fail. in this case if you ask if we do nothing, people will continually end up dead. so we're doing something. >> gonzalez also appeared on nbc's "meet the press" this morning telling chuck todd politicians facing reelection should watch out. >> these people who are being funded by the nra are not going to be allowed to remain in office when midterm elections roll around. they are going to be voted out of office. incumbency rates are going to drop. >> so, very emotional day from all of those students and, of course, an attempt, rick tyler, to extend this conversation beyond what we have learned is an all too familiar pattern of a

violent event like this happening, politicians talking about how terrible it is, and then it fading from the headlines and nothing changing. >> it's an unspeakably heart breaking. look, the solutions are difficult. there are some things we know we have to fix. it is true that law enforcement missed the signs. if we put together a composite of the shooter, within hours after he killed those 17 students. and all that information was available. and i remember some of the very first interviews breaking on this network, people saying, we absolutely know who this is. there was no doubt about it. they knew who he was. that seems like all that should have been done before. if there's things we need to do to take people's weapons away who shouldn't have weapons, we should do that. even when the assault rifle ban was passed back in the '90s, nobody's ar-15 was taken away.

the ar-15, you couldn't buy one, but they didn't take them away. the ar-15 platform which was armor light sold by colt back in 1959, the ar-15 has been around for decades and we didn't have ar-15s in schools shooting people. so, what has changed? >> but now they're selling a million two a year. in 2004 when the assault weapons ban expired they were selling 100,000 a year. this weapon has become incredibly popular in popular culture. you're right, you ban it, how do you get rid of the millions that are out there. >> of course you can. in australia they did. they had a big national buy-back. >> that's where the nothing -- that's where the nothing in washington will happen because there is no way this congress or this president -- there is no way -- people are going to call for a collection of weapons. and even if you took away the ar-15, let's say you took away the ar-15 and similar weapons,

there are many, many weapons that shoot the same ammunition. i have a gun that shoots the .223. it's a vermin rifle. it shoots just as hard and just as fast. >> what do you have it for? >> for personal protection. i like to do target shooting. i have handguns, i have a concealed carry. but i don't feel like -- i feel like there are millions of americans who own these weapons and somehow a political party is going to say these people own these weapons are bad? i don't think that's a very smart politically. >> let me jump in on that because we do have some new reporting from our good friend of the show and washington bureau post bureau chief phil rucker who writes about this series of tweets. and, ken vogel, i know you do a lot of work on this reporting as well, so interested in your take. apparently the president, surprise surprise, has been watching the news. and he's been surveying the mar-a-lago club members about whether he ought to champion gun control measures in the wake of

last week's school massacre because he has been noticing appearances by some of these surviving students. i mean, do we think that this -- i mean, certainly this president has shown that he most often takes action or reacts to things he picks up in the news media. >> he has been at different places on gun control. his sons have been very aggressive opponents of gun control measures, and they, as like rick, are hunters and they have, you know, deep ties to this community and this culture. and i'm not questioning any of that. that said, what i think that some of the calls for action now, even from the students who like clearly their passion and their grief is palatable and you don't want to take anything away from that. what they're ignoring, it's not the nra. there are people like donald trump, jr., but there are millions of those people who

are -- who, you know, really are animated by gun rights. that is their top animating issue. not because they give donations to individuals of congress and going after individual members of congress who get limited hard dollar donations from the nr, that's not going to do the trick when you have tens of millions of people voting on one of their top issues is second amendment rights. and the nra, as with other groups that are -- that are devoted to protecting those rights, are doing an amazing job of mobilizing those voters and sending alerts to them and key voting pieces of legislation. that is why. it's not the power of this given special interest group. it is that there is resonance for the opinions and the beliefs that they are devoted to, you know, protecting and furthering in the american public that is deeply embedded in the american public. >> but when you talk about mobilizing and what the nra is

doing, you act like these are two separate phenomena. but they're not. the fact that there are these millions of, i would say rabid gun advocates in the country is a relatively new phenomenon. joe la port did an amazing history for the nra a few years ago showing how it had been taken over in the late '70s by radicals who amped up this kind of feeling of paranoia, that you need to stockpile guns, you need ever more powerful guns. and, you know, and gun ownership -- gun buying just skyrocketed. >> they merely channelled and harnessed t. >> they did create it. >> potentially -- >> it didn't exist in the '60s. >> no need for the nra. all these groups do the same thing. you can look at environmental groups. they all jen up, we're going to drown, the sea is dry. the nra does something very similar. look, the members of the nra

support, particularly the nra has done an amazing job of organizing them. yes, they have political action. the students, i support their right to go out and organize the counter thing. >> and just because you have these -- there are millions of people who, you know, want to have ar-15s and would rather have completely automatic weapons, there are millions of more people who think that is absolutely insane. >> not doing as good a job of mobilizing. >> that's true. >> one at a time. ken? >> the polls show a majority support for an assault weapons ban. why, i ask you political experts why can't that pass. >> that's the thing. the other side has not done as good of a job. >> i can answer that question for you. the answer so thto that questio this is what i'm interested to see, if these students can keep this up, the thing is that the nra and the gun owners of america which is a group to the right of the nra, they pay attention when this fades from the headlines. day in, day out, they pay

attention. they organize and they mobilize. >> we have a terrorism task force. we need a school shooting task force. i'd look at the results of that. but we've got to protect our kids. we've got to do it today. there are a lot of schools -- look, my wife is a teacher and my daughter is a teacher. i want them to be safe. luckily they work in schools that you can't get in the school. you go to that school, you want to go in, you have to push a buzzer, you have to pass security and go to the office. you can't get to the rest of the school. now, a kid could potentially still bring a weapon in and they are vulnerable. i worry about that all the time. but we have to protect our kids. >> that certainly definitely of the case. i'm sorry we have to leave the discussion here. we will be back with more "kasie d.c." in just a minute. >> tomorrow's headlines before they go to print. >> what would your lead be about this event at the white house? >> tomorrow's questions before anyone's asked them. >> how far is this from normal? >> "the 11th hour" with brian williams week nights at 11:00 on msnbc. than our name suggests.

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no one's ever said that running for office is like riding a bike. mitt romney is back on the campaign trail. this weekend, bringing charts, and perhaps a little bit of a rusty remote control. >> and the answer -- woops, the answer can be learned a bit by looking at how we spend federal dollars. >> press the button. please change. change slide. there we go. long pause. there we go. now, this is so small you probably can't read it from

where you are. isn't it great? i press the button nothing happens, i don't press the button and something does happen. let me turn to the next -- you can turnoff the slides now. >> i really miss covering mitt romney i have to tell you. i promise later tonight we'll go deeper into the actual policy that he discussed and why he didn't contrast with the president as much as you might expect. but for all of you, rick, tyler, i should go to you on this one. it seems as though romney is, in seriousness, represents a return, in part, of a wing of the republican party that's been pretty much silenced. >> yeah, i think that's true. look, i mean, romney is solidly in the establishment camp. back in 2012, i think we win every candidate for except i think ron paul. every candidate got their chance to be in the lead. we said the heck with it, mitt romney, right? so, he doesn't generate a lot of excitement.

he's clearly competent. utahans love him. >> also, look, he was the governor of massachusetts. it's a big job. he did save the olympics. he ran a major corporation. >> and he will win. >> he will win? >> he was right about russia. >> he was right about russia. >> and when he does win, there will be -- there are already donors who want him to win and then position himself for a primary run against president trump in 2020. i'm already talking -- they're already -- a slide show performance doesn't dissuade them. >> we'll talk about it later. first, an iconic washington phrase has been getting quite a bit of use lately. >> follow the money. >> what do you mean? where? >> i can't tell you that. >> only now it's being tossed around in reference to play mates, first class airfare,

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welcome back. there have been so many other major stories going on about the trump administration that have just been drowned out this week. so, we are going to dedicate a little bit of time to something we're going to call for tonight, ken vogel explains it all. ken, you and maggie haberman were the first to report on this. president trump's inaugural committee paid nearly $26 million to an event planning

firm started by an advisor to first lady melania trump. the firm donated just $5 million to charity, which was less than expected, but the other piece of this that i thought was interesting was that this company apparently sprang up out of nowhere weeks before the inauguration? >> yeah, that's right. it was started by this woman who is sort of a society, she had helped plan the met gala, that's a major gala and charitable gala in new york city. and so she traveled -- >> the most elite? >> so she traveled in the same circle, social circle as melania trump and had apparently had some relationship with her to the point where she is now working as an unpaid advisor in the first lady's office. but before that, she started this company that got $26 million worth of payments from the inaugural committee. >> what was it for? what did they do? >> she was essentially like an event planner that helped put on various phases of the inauguration. i was told it was everything

from table settings at various dinners to instagram filters. >> is she buying the silver that went on the table? it seems like a lot. >> she was a general contractor who issued all these subcontracts. the reason why this story i think resonated was first of all, that the trump folks had refused to release this tax return from the inaugural committee, this nonprofit that was set up to put on the inauguration. so there were a lot of questions about why they weren't revealing how they spent their money when they actually did release it, people were like, oh, that's probably why. >> wasn't there another event planner who got paid an equal amount of money who was also paid -- >> that's right, yeah. there was a lot more money that came into this inaugural. he raised twice as much for his inauguration than barack obama who had raised the previous highest amount for his 2008 inauguration. raised $700 million. that was notable because there were a lot of corporations giving, a lot of donors who kept their distance from trump. it was a signal, hey, donald trump is now the only game in town. republican donors' corporations,

if they want to play ball and get access, this might be one way to do t. >> can we just say another reason this story should resonate which is that donald trump ran on a campaign of drain the swamp? >> i was going to bring that up. >> anticorruption and hillary clinton was kruptcorrupt. it was all about pay to play, that phrase. >> what does that remind me of? pay to play? >> the other piece of this, the other story that we're going to talk about here is scott pruitt, who has spent $107,000 on airplane flights during his first six months leading the apa. >> that was a lot. >> we live in a country where people become a cabinet secretary, you're pretty much set for life. i'm not saying i agree with this, but you can monetize that and make millions of dollars and fly first class or private the rest of your life. is it too much to ask for a little modesty and humility and caring what the taxpayers think? for the brief time you're in office, first class travel, bring your wives to europe, spouses.

>> let me show you what scott pruitt had to say then we'll talk more about this. >> there have been instances unfortunately during my time as administrator, as i have sploen and spent time as interaction has not been the best. ingress and egress off the plane, security aspect, those are decisions made by our detail team, chief of staff, i don't make any of those decisions. they place me on the plane where they think is best for a safety perspective. that's how they made those decisions. >> he is basically arguing while passengers in economy accosted me. therefore it was safer. >> that sounds a lot like, you know, like he's a snow flake. the whole -- again, a lot of the 2016 campaign, the trump campaign, was all about up ending the stifling p.c. culture. we want to say it like it is. it sounds like they want to be the only ones saying it like it is, whereas minority, for example, should not be saying it like it is. >> i was on a flight once with then fbi director bob mueller and his wife and his detail in

coach. i think it was a personal trip. the fbi has jets. that's how bob mueller rolls. people knew who he was. he was fighting terrorists after 9/11. >> i had sources reach out to me, they were in an airport in south carolina charleston, and scott pruitt rolled through with his security detail. no one had a clue who he was. people were like, who are all these body guards with? didn't realize it was this guy. to the extent he has a security -- and also on that same flight waiting in the same area without any security detail were u.s. senators tim scott and lindsey graham who just went about their business and everyone knew who they were. so, it raises a question about to what extent he really needs this protection and needs -- >> a little russia connection. during the obama presidency, the obama administration's ambassador to china was spotted by the press walking through the airport carrying his own bags flying coach. i remember the russians were like, what is wrong with your ambassadors? they travel with the police. it was kind of a point of pride

for the americans that our public servants mingle with the public. they don't travel on jets. >> use taxpayer dollars responsibly. our two kens are leaving us. thank you so much for coming on tonight. i really appreciate it. still to come, a hot congressional race in florida has democrats thinking about a flip. next i'm joined by kristin rosen gonzalez to talk about what is inspiring her to make a run for congress in 2018. ♪ for all the noses that stuff up around daisies. for all the eyes that get itchy and watery near pugs. for all the people who sneeze around dust. there's flonase sensimist allergy relief. it relieves all your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills don't. it's more complete allergy relief. and all from a gentle mist you can barely feel. flonase sensimist helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. and 6 is greater than 1. flonase sensimist. [fbi agent] you're a brave man, your testimony will save lives.

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welcome back to "kasie dc," we continue our series tonight on women running for higher office. tonight we are looking at the hotly ton tested race in florida's 27th congressional district. right now there are at least p seven democrats, including two women who plan to run for the seat. one of them is miami beach city commissioner kristen rosen gonzalez and she joins me live. thank you for being with me. >> thank you for having me on the show and highlighting women. that's really important. >> i want to start with i know that you live close to, of course, this tragic incident that we've been covering all week in broward county and you are trying to bring to the table some ideas on how to prevent the next tragedy. what do you think is the best way to fix this?

would you support an assault weapons ban? do you have other ideas. >> i think we need to do all of it. our campaign has tried to be creative to work around this love of the second amendment and we propose a tax on bullets. we sell 12 billion bullets a year and tax it at $2 we could use that money to shore up our schools. how many more notifications are we going to get that say mass shooting in them? how much more blood needs to be spilled? it's awful. i woke up thinking not only are my children feeling unsafe, i'm feeling unsafe sending my kids to school. it hits so close to home. it's that these weapons are readily available. and most of the shooters are

men, they get a spike in test tos roan, they can't have access to these guns and bullets. >> speaking of p gender, you have been in the news because politico quoted you as saying you were harvey weinsteined yourself. can you explain what happened and why were you -- why did you decide to come forward with this? were you reluctant? >> i had an incident, and then i remember posting me too. i really relate to this movement. at the time we were having our local commission race here in miami beach and i was supporting a candidate who exposed himself to me in the car. i wasn't going to say anything about him and i continued to support him, and i was embarrassed about it and didn't know what to do and somebody on the campaign said you have to come forward.

it's so hard being a politician as a woman. the last thing you want to do is come forward and talk about somebody's genitals. it's uncomfortable. i got attacked because of it. i was happy i did do it because within one hour of it being published i was getting text messages from women who were also harassed. so i almost helped a person get elected who was going to use his power. we have to come forward. >> if you get elected, will you support nuclear prograncy pelos leader in the house? >> we have didn't ways of looking at politics. our campaign is local, we're hiring local people. i don't want to spend all day in a call box raising money. so while i do think nancy pelosi

has done great acts and i think she's a great representative for the democratic party, i think it's time we move forward and start electing people who are working right now and have energy and approach politics with rational, compassionate, efrp thetic politics. >> so it's no? >> a lot of things i do is contrary to what the dccc is doing. >> so no, yes? >> it's difficult to come out and speak out against nancy pelosi. i would have to see who else is running. i try to stay open minded about these things. i did go up to meet with her and several other leaders in washington d.c., there were a bunch of eager candidates. i don't ascribe that politics is only about raising money, that's

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we are still feeling the

shock waves from yet another school shooting. >> the massacre that took 17 lives. >> has reignited the debate over guns and mental health. >> how much more are we going to take. >> i will not feel safe going back to school. >> we should not sell assault weapons in this country. >> an ar-15? >> it's not needed to hunt bears. >> some do hunt with an ar-15. >> if you ban the ar-15 they'll find another way to do it. >> from shovels to bricks to hands you're equally dead. >> the solution is we need c concealed carry in the schools. >> let's move to the russia indictment. >> charged with supporting the presidential campaign of then candidate donald trump. >> president trump is on a twitter tear. >> tweeting the indictments clear him of collusion, they don't. >> this is a huge deal.

>> i would be very careful if i were president trump here. >> i do think there are other shoes to drop. >> i think we've unfortunately got more to learn and more to come in the days and weeks ahead. >> russia did mean to interfere with our election. >> everybody knows it except the president of the united states. welcome back to "kasie dc." joining me on set, msnbc, garrett hague and nbc national political reporter mike memly. i want to start with you, mike. the story we've been talking about, the la times your former home is reporting that rick gates is going to plead guilty, which, of course, is a switch. can you put into context for us what this could mean for paul manafort and the mueller investigation, broadly. >> sure, happy to be here in new york, sorry to miss out on the

fun on set. as far as what it means as far as rick gates is concerned the person most nervous is paul manafort, these two worked closely together for decades in their political consulting. what's in focus is not necessarily anything related to the 2016 election and the roles they played in the trump campaign but their work as clients for russia or at least in the ukraine. so this is part of what we know that the special counsel and his team have been looking for outside the russia probe as we understand it now. what's interesting is every time you get leverage on an additional person as part of the investigation you put the squeeze on somebody else. so in this context we have gates now flipping and potentially putting more pressure on manafort, the question is will manafort feel the pressure on the next higher up in the ladder, which is potentially president trump himself. >> julia, you had what i would describe as an epic piece in the

atlantic. you wrote about what putin wants. you wrote in the same way that russians overestimate america, seeing it as an all-powerful okay traitor of global political developments, americans project their own fears onto russia, a country that is a paradox of deafness, but is always shaking on the teetering of collapse. it's always held to its history. you talk about the group of spies that tried to meddle in the 2008 election, known as legals. what is it you know from your deep experience about covering russia and what was included in this piece that you think people should remember as they think about what's going on here politically? >> i think they should remember that russia is not as good as we think they are. and that if the russians had done this and there wasn't the perfect political storm that was happening in 2016, if there

wasn't -- you know, if the republicans weren't fielding like 800 candidates, if there wasn't a racist backlash to the first black president, if there weren't massive economic and social changes afoot in the wake of globalization and a lingering melaze after the great recession -- >> you're saying it wouldn't be a norm. >> right. you have to understand it was a shoe string budget and what one former obama called, a spaghetti call. throw spaghetti at the wall and something will stick. >> i get it. one thing is how congressional republicans react to this. when we were talking about it earlier in the show, quite frankly the president's national

security team who many in the congress trust on these issues are saying one thing about how important the indictment on friday was and the degree to which russia is a bad actor, than the president who seems more concerned about his own political prospects. >> senate republicans seem dialled in on the old fashioned relief that russia is still a bad guy. you have lindsey graham who's been here a long time, who's always held the line on it. he said he won't talk to the president about it because he knows what he thinks. and you have people saying russia is not our friend and they know it. on the house side there's a different dynamic because some of the newer members in the house and som some who see donald trump as someone to emulate and whose coattails they can ride are going to fall in line a little bit more. we'll know how it goes when and if someone close to the president gets indicted.

what happens if donald trump jr. or jared gets in real trouble and congressional republicans have to pick between what they've been saying all along and what will happen with the president if it happens. >> there were some people hoping it would go a certain way and they'd be freed of donald trump, but that's trick yer. the president always tweeted that russia started their anti-u.s. campaign in 2014, long before i announced that i would run for president. the results of the election were not impacted. the trump campaign did not wrong. no collusion. of course, the president is right he didn't announce his run until 2015 but he hinted at runs much earlier. it was reported in 2014, that president trump was testing the waters in new hampshire. and see if you can guess who

said this in 2013 about testing trump's standing in each state. the research was commissioned we did not spend $1 million on this research for it just to sit on my bookshelf. if you guessed michael cohen, you win all the points. and then there's this. >> 2016 is very far away. again i did this for bob, not for any other reason. >> you said you were putting your own money into looking at a presidential bid. is that the case? >> that's case. i wouldn't do it if i was going to come in second. >> that was me interviewing donald trump in 2013. of course, he did not come in second. mike, i want to ask you about this because you were at many of these early events. do you think that it is a fair characterization for the president to put this particular spin on it or is it misleading? >> i think it's a classic unforced error here.

and while a lot of people close to the president would rather he step away from the twitter machine. when we were all looking at the 37-page indictment, we were focussed on the time line. yes, it was 2014, and their race didn't gear up until 2016. and their focussing on trump was later still. when he tweets out something so easily disproven you can't help but point it out. i was going back reading those words from a young mike in 2014, i was in new hampshire for the reelection race and donald trump was speaking and i thought why not stop by. my write up, i wasn't necessarily taking him seriously as a presidential candidate. >> none of us were. >> this was about how much is he trying to get attention versus how serious he is. and he was attacking chris christie, who was a front runner. and he was telling the newspaper that he was thinking of running

for president. so while we may not have been taken him seriously at the time, he wanted to be taken seriously at the time. >> how much was this the russians stumbling into something great with president trump? >> i think it was, because the russians did not expect him to win. you know, the russians, especially vladimir putin and the people closest to him, the people there when he ordered the attack on our election, are former kbg people and they think in terms of conspiracy theories. they thought it was sealed up for hillary clinton, they had it in the tank for her, and they were surprised as us when donald trump won. 2014 is an interesting starting point. that's when they invaded ukraine. that was a far more extension shl crisis for them. all of this started because they were concerned about global opinion of their actions in ukraine. and then it proved effective and

they kept going. >> it's so weird for the president to get hung up on the 2014 thing. to the throwing spaghetti at the wall. it's not like they said donald trump is in new hampshire now is the time to get involved. it's a way for the president to cling onto -- >> there's been a lot of reporting that the obama administration knew about this in 2014, 2015, 2016 and they chose not to do anything about it. so he does have a point there. >> much to the chagrin of the hillary clinton campaign in many cases. i want to change gears. under pressure in the wake of the rob porter scandal, chief of staff john kelly is overhauling security clearances. he quote told staffers in a memo we we should and must do better in the future. dozens of senior white house officials could soon look access to classified information.

more than 130 staff in the white house and other agencies closely associated with it were operating on some form of an interim clearance as of last november, including a dozen of the president's most senior aides. that list includes, jared kushner, ivanka trump and don mcgahn. but it's kushner who seems to be of particular interest as his background check continues. and "the washington post" reports he issues more request for information from the intelligence community than any other white house employee. the paper cites a person with knowledge of the situation. kushner's attorney said his ability to do the work assigned by the president will not be affected. and there is, of course, one more wrinkle. now oversight chair, trey gowdy, is sniffing around the practices as well launching an investigation. this situation, kushner we've also read from reports is the person who reads the presidential daily brief. the intelligence that really our

president is supposed to be, in many ways, the only person to receive all of this information. i mean, how potentially damaging is this for the white house? >> well, this whole thing has been going on. these people after a year haven't gotten security clearance. it didn't seem like they were going to deal with it because jared kushner is not going to get security clearance. i don't think he'll ever get security clearance. so how is now kelly who decided to take action is going to say these people can't get security clearance and jared kushner gets access to the country's most secret classify indication. he shouldn't go anywhere near it by virtue of the fact he's the president's son-in-law. >> and he's heavily courted by the top chinese dip employmats,

reached out to russians in weird ways. it's worth noting what president trump ran on. a lot of the attack on hillary clinton was she mishandled classified information. let's remember that for a little bit. >> the interesting one for me is don mcgahn, he needs this access to do his job. if jared kushner can't read the pdb anymore, what critical work has he done that's stopped. >> peace in the middle east. >> he has these projects that haven't amounted to that much. if he gets forced aside, he'll still have the ear of the president because of being the son-in-law. mcgahn is a different story. >> julia ioff thank you for being on. we'll have the latest reporting on whether there will be a biden 2020 campaign.

no one could put a time line together when four soldiers were killed in niger. but first arne duncan will talk about deadly shootings on campuses and what policies, if any, can make a difference. ng, shooting pain in my feet. i hear you, sam. cedric, i couldn't sleep at night because of my diabetic nerve pain. i hear you, claire, because my dad struggled with this pain. folks, don't wait. step on up and talk to your doctor. because the one thing i keep hearing is... i'm glad i stepped on up. me too, buddy. if you have diabetes and burning, shooting pain in your feet or hands, step on up and talk to your doctor today.

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this was an act of terror and an act of hate. once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on gun. we have a pattern now of mass shootings in the country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world. it's not surprising today gabby was doing what she always does, listening to the hopes and concerns of her neighbors. the majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. somehow this has become routine. the reporting is routine, my response here at this podium ends up being routine. the conversation in the aftermath of it. we've become numb to this. >> let me be clear, casey. i don't think this is a school issue. this is a e societal issue. whether you're going to school, church, a movie theatre, whether you're a congressional leaders

playing baseball on a baseball diamond, it's part and parcel of the american life. we have to take this on, we have to allow our children and adults to live free of fear and we as add adults have lacked the moral courage to keep our children safe and it's unacceptable. >> we know there's quite a bit that fell through the cracks from the law enforcement side of things in the parkland shooting case. they did have bits of evidence when taken together would suggest that they should have been watching or caught this before it actually happened. what kind of responsibilities do you think law enforcement bears here and washed change from their perspective to try and prevent a shooting again? >> we have to look at the bigger picture. the fact is for ten years our

nation had a ban on assault weapons we had 43% reduction in murders due to mass shootings, that's not just some number, those are real lives, children, brothers, sisters, wives, more people lived during that time than have lived since the ban went away. we ask why congress is dysfunctional. let me talk directly to students across the country, what they're showing now, their moral authority, is strool, they're going to need us where we need to go. they're going to know for their congressman, senators, governors, what's the letter grade the nra is giving them and if your governor has an "a" from the nra like governor scott in florida, that should be the scarlet letter. we need governors getting an

"f". our young people, walk down to your congressman's office, senator's office, if they have an f from the nra applaud them, support them, if you they get an a, you need to demand they never take another dollar from the nra. >> what do you think makes the gun associations so powerful? why are lawmakers who depend on these nra grades so fearful what the nra might do to them? and why is it that groups that oppose guns, why do they seem powerless in comparison to the nra. >> i don't think they're powerless, they have deep pockets. senator rubio in florida has received north of $3 million, i have no idea about governor scott. president trump received more than $30 million.

i think kids' lives are worth more than that. we've had many politicians stand up to the nra, a republican or democrat, i could care less. we need children to be able to live to grow up free of fair and be happy. these teens now, what they're doing is extraordinary, they have a chance not just to make history but to literally change history. if they make it so receiving money from the nra basically eliminating you from being a political leader, they will change over the next couple months what has taken, obviously, far too long, generations to happen. i'm so hopeful and optimistic about where their leadership is going to take us. >> i want to ask you, sir, as the former leader of the chicago public school system, you've dealt with quite a bit of violence there. in some ways it's different than what we've seen with the mass shootings. what are the differences and

similarities? how can you fight the mass shootings? what have you learned from trying to combat this in schi chicago? >> whether it's mass shootings or individuals with handguns, we're dealing with violence, that's what i'm devoting my life to working on. when i led the public schools we lost on average one child every two weeks due to gun violence. you heard in the clip the president's passion and anger, somehow we've normalized these things, somehow it's okay. and this doesn't happen in other countries. this is an american-made problem. it only happens in america. it's a man-made problem, it's not a natural disaster. we need to fix it like england, australia, canada, japan, like so many other countries have done. a harsh thing for me to say, but it's the truth, other countries

value their children more than we do in chicago, more than we do in the united states and that has to change and it has to change now. it's time to act. we have to act. >> former secretary arne duncan, thank you for your time. i appreciate it. >> thank you so much. when we come back, a piece of videotape that has aged well. >> russia is a geopolitical foe. i'm not going to wear rose colored classes when it comes to russia or mr. putin, i'm not going to say to him i'll give you more flexibility after the election. after the election he'll get more backbone. >> mitt romney runs again. we'll look inside his campaign event and the turbulence within his own party. we're back after this.

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moron? >> i'm not going to dignify the question. >> oh, the job mitt romney might have had overshadowed by the intense news cycle that was this past week is the return of a political icon who is now looking for a different job, even though we all thought his time on the campaign trail was done. >> he's not going to run for anything. >> how do i make the case? where? my time on the stage is over, guys. i'm happy for the time i had there, but my time is over. >> do wa? >> do what? >> we're done. >> mitt romney finished the 2012 election in second place. but over the weekend, he did return to the campaign trail. closing his remarks by riffing on a past presidential slogan. >> during the last campaign, the president famously said he was going to make america great

again, our democrat friends said it's already great. i'm not going to resolve that debate. but i'm going to say this, america is a great nation because it is strong and it is good. russia may be strong, russia under putin is not good and will not have the capacity of being a great nation. we are a good nation, a great nation. utah is a good and strong and great state. i hope to be able to honor the state by being a member of the senate. >> it seems as though mitt romney doesn't think america needs to be made great again. so garrett, you and i spent a lot of time -- >> entirely too much time. >> it seems it's -- that clip that we showed was from the netflix documentary. i know you and i were in the ballroom waiting for them to come out and say something when it became clear he was going to

lose the election to barack obama, it turns out that was the conversation june founfolding i hotel room when he thought he was going to win the election. talk about the psychology of mitt romney, why would he want to jump back in the ring? i think i know the answer but i want to hear your take on it. >> there is the call to service to him. it sounds corny, but there is the boy scout-ish thing with him. i think it comes from his dad. he was supposed to be president at some time. but i think some of it is also personal. and in the documentary there's a great conversation he has about being a loser, you lose president and that's it you're done, you're a loser. i don't think this is someone who wants to be a loser forever. he's done successful things in his life, ironically, except

politics. this is his second senate campaign, and i don't think he wants to go out and be a loser. he does care. say what you will about his politics, you don't have to love him. i think this is somebody who feels they have something left to give and he's going to do it. >> speak to that point, about his chances of winning. it looks as though the utah republican party chairman was saying he doesn't live in utah. >> this is mitt romney's race to lose. there's been poling between him and the democrat, jenny wilson, there's a state auditor who may try to run against him, a couple republicans who may try to run to the right. but utah is a great state for mitt romney in the sense it is a place where his politics, being resistant to donald trump is good.

trump's approval rating is lower in utah than many other red states. >> a lot because of his inflammatory language on immigration. what can mitt romney bring to washington that's missing now? >> it's kind of a mystery. i agree with what he said about his motivation for running. i think he wants to serve. but romney is a bit of a chameleon, he ran against ted kennedy in 1994, the only u.s. senate candidate to reject the contract with america, even though that was a house document but the senate was still all talking about it he was the only one to come out and say i'm not running on that, i don't believe in contracts. and he was the only challenger who lost that year. and then he became the governor of massachusetts, which is

opposed to utah. when he ran against barack obama, the criticism was people could point back to massachusetts and say he gave us romneycare, so he couldn't criticize obamacare. now he's going to go to utah which is a conservative state. i wonder which romney is going to show up. >> i think we're starting to get some of the answers to the questions. the way that utah is conservative is not necessarily in the age of trump the same way that say arizona is conservative. >> it's not a screaming nationalist population. this is old school conservative. this is family values conservative. it's not that utah doesn't like trump's policies, they like tax cuts as much as the next group. but they find him to some degree offensive. >> to some degree. >> with his five sons and his

gaggle and grandchildren and romney, the image he presents, he's not utah long term, but from saving the olympics in 2002 he's going to show up as the local boy done good. he pulls somewhere north of puppies on christmas morning. a loss would be extraordinary. when we continue we'll talk to a "new york times" reporter who's getting to the bottom of what happened when american forces in africa were ambushed. this extraordinary reporting is up next.

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i don't know how he got killed, where he got killed or anything. i don't know that part. they never told me and that's what i been trying to find out since day one, since october 4th. >> are you confident you're going to get the answers you need? >> if i keep pushing for them i will. >> and they just say they don't know? >> they won't tell me. they won't tell me anything. i don't know anything. >> that was the widow of sergeant le-david johnson, talking about the questions she had about her husband's death back in october. he was one of four sold soldiers killed in an ambush in nij last ye niger last year. now we're getting a new look into what happened. before we talk to her, i want to

play for you the video the "new york times" put together explaining what happened at the beginning of the ambush. >> we see seven soldiers taking cover. the attackers are somewhere in this area. an american soldier, we believe to be staff sergeant jeremiah johnson, wearing a helmet camera enters the white vehicle and drives it a short distance. he steps out and begins firing toward the tree line. then he runs for cover behind the white vehicle and the video cuts to a new scene. >> explain for our viewers what happened here and what did you uncover about why we were -- why we were even there, and can you answer some of the questions that mie isha johnson had? >> i think we can answer a few questions. we know now on october 3rd, american intelligence agencies

had been tracking a man who was a member of a terrorist group that had had recently pledged allegiance to isis. and they got a hit on an electronic device, possibly a phone he was using, it lit up close to this village and a team of troops were sent to a base in northern niger to go there and carry out a raid. where things get complicated, the same day, october 3rd, a different patrol was in the same area doing what people described to us as a vanilla patrol. they were on a low-risk mission, going to meet local elders and put a government face to the counterterrorism effort. the group coming from the north ended up getting scotched, we believe it was bad weather or a problem with their helicopter, and the one with the low risk patrol was asked to go ahead even though they were lightly

armed and did not have air support. they went to the area the militant was believed to be hiding, and at that point they had been out for nearly 24 hours. they were going back to base, and they stopped in the village, what two soldiers who survived the ambush told me they had no reason to stop there. they stopped because they were out of water. they stopped by a well, went to get water and they began to lose time, they lost time first of all because there was no bucket at the well so villagers went and got a bucket for them. then the village chief came out, they felt the village chief was trying to delay them. and then the ambush came out. we learned that the phone number of the terrorist they were hunting was found in the village chief's phone. >> so essentially the village chief had the person they were looking for in his cell phone

and this is why this unfolded. you mentioned you talked to two soldiers. >> yes. >> how did you do this reporting? >> we were working it from a number of different angles. i went to niger, i got back a couple days ago. in niger i was able to speak to several soldiers who survived the ambush. some of their high erups i was able to go to a prison and interview members of the terrorist group who had been detained and filled me in on aspects of what they believed happened. and my contacts in washington were working their sources here. they carried out dozens of interviews with people involved at all levels, in intelligence, the military, et cetera, and finally we contacted the families and spent a lot of time trying to flesh out the b biographies of the young men

that were killed in this incident. >> at what point in your reporting that you did did this all go wrong? where was the weak spot. >> there were a couple. number one the decision to send a force in that wasn't equipped. in the body camera we got, you see what's in their car, they have personal weapons, the rifles that soldiers carry on them at all times. they don't have medium to heavy weapons which is what you would have in a situation of high risk. so that's the first issue. they were sent out to do something that was a high risk mission but they had prepared for a low risk one. the second decision that i think was the big one is they actually went to the place where the terrorist was supposed to be hiding, they found nothing. so the high risk portion of that mission went fine, and at that point on their way back they made an unplanned stop in this

village. what military officials explain today me there was some level of complacency, they went to this area many times, had no contact, so at some point you get used to going out and having nothing happen and they lost a lot of time in the village and as it happened that village was sympathetic to the terrorist group to the point the village elder, chief, had the number of the person they were seeking on his cell phone. >> a tragic and difficult story. thank you for being with us tonight and for you and your colleagues, great reporting in the "new york times." >> thank you. >> "kasie dc" back right after this. andest grand jeté? she could... but in real life she pays her sister, for that sweater she stained. (phone buzzes) chase. make more of what's yours.

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biden represents the youth and vitality and future of the democratic party. the democratic party is a party that is running on ideas out of the '30s, so it's not surprising that their cadre between biden and bernie sanders, it reflects a party whose ideas don't work. >> you spent some time traveling with joe biden. at the risk of my question sounding like a tweet, he's running, right? >> this is the job that joe biden has always wanted. there's been a lot of commentary about how he could have beaten trump. his people are from scranton, pennsylvania, like i should have been the guy. this is a gig he's always wanted. he is so well known within the party. he has to be careful about the hamlet act this time around. in 2016, democrats were very

patient with him as he made that decision. it was deeply personal. it had to do with his family after the tragic death of his son beau. >> you are our resident biden whisperer here at nbc news. where do you see his decision making process here? it does seem like there are some potential donors who feel a little skeptical. they don't necessarily want to sign on board with him not knowing what he's going to know. >> the big question around 2020 for biden is just how long democrats will be willing to wait out the hamlet act. i spoke with a source who was in the room for the meeting that josh letterman at the ap reported about. he's not coy. he's not coy publicly or privately. he was just getting the elephant in the room out there.

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before we go, let's talk about what to watch for in the week ahead, including an interview next week on "kasie dc" that i'm very excited about. >> we don't want to fight to break the glass christopher steele we want a whole new house. >> she's gone from actress to ceo of the women's co-working space. if you haven't heard of her yet, the millennials in your life certainly have. now i want to talk to my panel. what are you looking for this week? >> immaterial to s want to see extraordinary kid in florida can keep up the political pressure on gun control this week. congress is out. it's going to be hard to keep

this issue in the spotlight. the las vegas shooting disappeared like that in this news cycle. can these kid keep up that pressure. >> i think that we have to get excited for the fact that the primary season starts on march 6th. >> oh no. >> we have some races to watch and it's only going to heat up from there. >> see if paul manafort cuts a deal for himself. i think the pressure is on him. gates was very close to him and knows all of his business. he's going to i'm iseemingly tu manafort. >> first of all, baseball season is back. my orioles reporting for spring training positions. so i personally am -- i hate this gap between football and baseball season. also, curling, the norwegian curling pants, if you haven't seen this, you've got to watch.

they wear different pants -- this is something i just learned about tonight. that is going to do it for "kasie dc." i'm going to leave you with this. we're going to be back next week, but for now good night from washington. she was the love of my life, always. >> she was daddy's girl. debutante and tomboy. the free spirit with fiery hair and a wide open heart. >> she was a very kind person. >> then she vanished. >> i call the police. something is wrong. >> and something was. days passed, then monthed. no leads, no clues, no progress. >> i thought i'm not going to put up with this. we've got to get moving on