goes on. some of jim huden's former band mates still make a living playing music, though not to the kind of crowds the exhibitionists used to draw. ♪ ♪ >> we're the exhibitionists. thank you. long story. we'll talk about it later. >> as for jean huden, the woman who protected the killer out of love even as she was being treated so badly and who then finally stood up for herself and exposed him, the prosecutions of jim huden and peggy thomas represent the end of something sad and maybe the start of something better. >> i'm tired of pay for example what they did. so hopefully i'll be able to move on now and, you know, i can pick up the pieces, you know, stay with bill and kind of try to have a normal life again. ♪ that's all for this edition of "dateline" friday. i'm lester holt. join us for dateline at 7:00, welcome to "kasie d.c." i'm kasie hunt. we are live every sunday from washington from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. eastern. tonight, be cool. it will all workout. that is the president of the united states talking about china. plus, leaks and the leaking leakers who leak them. inside the art of sabotage in the trump white house. and i talk with senator joe manchin about the looming fight he faces. later carlos curbelo and others

taking things into their hands to deal with immigration. but first the senior senator from arizona has endured insult after insult this week. at one point labelled songbird john, a reference to his time as a p.o.w. and while discussing votes for cia director gina haspel who mccain opposes, white house special assistant kelly sadler said, quote, it doesn't matter, he's dying anyway. apology for those comments. apology for those comments. here's the white house's apology for those comments. >> does the white house not think you need to condemn these remarks or comments -- >> again, i'm not going to validate a leak one way or the other out of an internal staff meeting. >> are you saying she didn't say this? >> again, i'm not going to validate a leak out of an internal staff meeting one way or the other. >> no, no, sorry, here's the white house apology. >> i think the remarks are awful, but let's look at this in context. that was said in a private meeting inside the white house.

that's not like -- you might say something really nasty about me off the air, it doesn't have that much impact. you come on air and say it officially that's a problem. this is a private meeting inside the white house, it was a joke, a badly considered joke, an awful joke she said fell flat. you have to have some freedom to speak in a private meeting candidly. we've all said things in a small group we would never say publicly. >> that's not either. something is clearly wrong with our control room. hopefully this is actually the right thing, the white house apology. >> those comments, whether they were made or not made, some reports in there obviously, too, about the internal workings of that meeting that just shouldn't be made public. >> sadler reportedly did apologize to meghan mccain over the phone, but still hasn't followed through on a promise to do it in public. and jonathan swan at axios reports that huddled behind closed doors with the communications staff, sarah huckabee sanders said sadler's comments were wrong.

quote, a visibly upset and furious press secretary sarah sanders told the group, quote, i am sure this conversation is going to leak, too. and that's just disgusting, according to a source in the room. cue, lindsey graham. >> are you satisfied with how the white house has responded? >> no, not really. it's pretty disgusting thing to say. if it was a joke, it was a terrible joke. i just wish somebody from the white house would tell the country that was inappropriate, that's not who we are, and the trump administration and john mccain can be criticized for any political decision he's ever made or any vote he's ever cast, but he's an american hero. and i think most americans would like to see the trump administration do better in situations like this. it doesn't hurt you at all to do the right thing and to be big. >> that's what they could have said publicly on thursday. word for word, and simply ended

this whole thing. joining me on set chief correspondent for the washington post dan balls, washington bureau chief for vice news, shawna thomas. political analyst eli stokols. former advisor to jeb bush and former spokesman for boehner michael steele. and joining the conversation from nashville, msnbc contributor and author of the new book the soul of america, the battle for our better angels, historian john meacham. john meacham, i want to start with you. the overarching question i have every time this president says anything, it seems, about john mccain, is i wonder does he have any sense of history. >> no. i could go on if you like. [ laughter ] >> please, continue. >> no. no, i mean, it's the anti-joe biden answer. no, he doesn't. and remember, what's happened here is the presidency has become a tabloid media culture where you throw a punch. if somebody might seem to be

about to throw a punch at you, you punch again and again and again. it's the war of against all. that's the way trump views the world. it's the way the white house unquestionably views the world because every white house takes on the characteristics and character of the person at the top. it's inevitable. every, every court since the dawn of time has reflected the character of the person in charge. and unquestionably, this view of senator mccain -- i think one of the reasons we've had a couple of shots at mccain is because mccain is in many ways the anti-trump. he is someone who has served virtually his entire life. he's a flawed guy. he'd be the first one to tell you that. he has a great sense of tragedy, great sense of history, and understands that he's going to get some things right and some things wrong which, therefore, makes him the un-trump. and so i think that president trump looks at that, i think his people look at that and it makes

them uncomfortable. i think the bush family is a lot like that for them. they see other people doing what they, in their heart of hearts know they ought to be doing, and i think out of that resentment comes this kind of really, not inexcusable because if the person apologized we could move on. but the incapacity to admit you made a mistake is a troubling thing. >> dan balls, one of the things that was mentioned also in jonathan swan's reporting out tonight is this idea that we learn more about what goes on behind the scenes in the trump white house through these leaks than we would in weeks, months, years of another administration. having covered many of these -- are you surprised by the degree of information that comes out of the white house and allows us to learn about things like what was said? >> not so much any more. i think at the beginning we were all surprised by how leaky this administration was, certainly this white house was. and part of the reason in the early stages as you well know was that you had real infighting, real factional

problems and they were trying to settle it in a public way by leaking. supposedly that was going to begin to end when john kelly came in. it didn't. it is part of the culture of this white house. people, people want to be able to separate themselves from some of the things that are going on and, therefore, they take it out in public, not by standing behind their own words, but by leaking to reporters. and it is a constant stream which continues to put the white house in a terrible light and situation. >> and shawna thomas, now that this of course is out there, the white house seems to have a responsibility to be held accountable for this. but they don't seem to agree. >> no, they don't seem to agree. and i think one of the things that we were talking about, we say a lot of uncomfortable colorful jokes in the newsroom. all of us have been part of newsrooms where you say things you wouldn't want to say in public. when they come out publicly we have to answer for it.

the company has to answer for it. that's the thing that happened here. something got said, it was off color, and this white house knows it's out there. they have not actually said it didn't happen. they apparently aren't going with that defense. therefore they have to say something. instead of us talking about the fact that president trump helped get three people out of a north korean prison this week, we are starting the show off talking about the fact they denigrated someone who is a war hero. so, they're getting in front of their own message, too. >> right. michael steele, i have to say i've had -- well, close to a dozen conversations with republicans since this happened, and republicans on the hill who, yes, john mccain has -- i could use some very colorful language to describe the feelings people have had at various times about john mccain, what he said, what he did, voted for. he's kind of a guy who one minute can be joking and really fun, and the next minute can be essentially biting your head off

in the hallway because you asked him what he deems to be a stupid question. but right now the entire, the entire hill is, you know, thinking about this man in the terms of the small place where they work and really lion izing the contributions he's made. republicans are so angry at the white house for this. >> john has lived a life of service. they are upset about the leaks. he is an american hero, he is a states man, and he is somebody who deserves respect. at this point, this is the wrong cross to die on. this is a ridiculous position for the white house to stick with. they need to apologize. i could hear my fellow episcopalian. >> you want to jump in there? >> there is an old rule, you have to pick which hill to die on. is this really the hill the trump white house wants to take bullets on? you just made a really interesting point, which is they're not calling this fake

news, which is interesting. you know, and so i think part of it is they feel if they apologize, maybe it opens the door to having to actually be accountable for what they do going forward. and that's a hell of a prospect. >> is this possibly a situation, john, where, i mean, when trump's campaign first started everybody thought that his criticism of john mccake as a p.o.w. would be the hill trump died on. the lesson they learned, he's not going to die on this hill. >> that is absolutely right. how you began almost always dictates how you finish. one of the first -- you're exactly right. one of the first moments where we realized kryptonite -- the ordinary political kryptonite didn't work on donald trump was the first mccain comment. and so in their experience, they can get away with taking shots at establishment figures because that's what the base loves. >> eli stokols, your view? >> i think that's right. they look at everything, no matter how sacrosanct, whether it's a war hero in the twilight of his life, a gold star

family -- we can revisit that whole saga as well because it's very similar. they don't ever apologize. as john said a few minutes ago, the culture, the organization that starts from the top. donald trump before he was ever in politics decided i'm not that kind of person. i'm not going to apologize. nobody at the white house will either. and it's true, they have -- we're in this place now of almost absolute tribalism in our politics. and i think that they believe that no matter what they've said or done, they're just going to turn around, weapon eyes it, they're going to look at this and say the elites are trying to scold us, they're getting on their moral high horse. it is quite a parallel to draw to that situation last summer when you had the gold star family, the president made the condolence call. they said he was upset. john kelly tried to come out and explain it, ended up exacerbating the entire thing by attacking the congresswoman, lying about her background. they just have a hard time getting out of their own way because the president himself can never admit that he or anybody on his staff is wrong.

>> uh-huh. in that axios sneak peek tonight we were talking about earlier, jonathan swan asked some of what he calls the white house's most prolific leakers and he asked them what motivates them to do it. one of senior officials told him that they usually come after someone loses an internal decision and they want to jen up some public blow back. you have to realize that working here is like being in a never ending mexican standoff. everyone has leaks, pointed at each ooh it's only a matter of time before someone shoots. there is rarely a peaceful conclusion so you might as well shoot first. to cover my tracks, i usually pay attention to other staffer's idioms and that throws it off me. shawna? >> you don't want to get blamed for something. >> for sure. but you remember, you covered the obama administration as well. we talk about how this white

house gets angry about leaks. in the obama administration, leaking was a cardinal sin. but it also didn't happen as much. and they would argue, i think, that it's because people believed in the boss and they would probably explain the leaking in the trump white house as in some ways a lack of loyalty. do you think that's what's going on? >> i think also the obama white house, or people who had worked for president obama, would say that they had each other's backs as well. they didn't feel like they were in a, to use the term that jonathan swan used, mexican standoff. that they were all in it together and they also, i think, had a pretty good idea of what the boss wanted to achieve with specific goals. and there wasn't as much confusion about what he would want and, therefore, there wasn't as much to leak about, about like internal disputes. i think there is a lot of confusion even when the president talks and tweets, we who are publicly -- who are publicly getting his information, we don't necessarily know what he wants. and if they don't know what he wants, they don't know who is backing them up. they don't know if they're

backed up by people they work with. it creates a situation where everyone is scared and kind of willing to talk. i don't sense that with the obama administration. >> i think there is possibly a sense you can use leaked information to influence the president because it gets on television. >> right. you get a president who reads news coverage but not internal memos or documents or goes to meetings and all this. if you're trying to achieve a policy result, the media is often the best mechanism. >> people were leaking to espn or something like that, i don't know. >> i think so much of this leaking has very little to do with that. it's not like these are policy debates and people are arguing those positions. this gets personal. it gets nasty. >> ugly. >> it's petty. and i think the other factor that's true about this administration compared to many others is that most of the people in the white house do not have a long history with donald trump. most white houses certainly in the first two years are populated by people who had gone through a campaign, who had developed a bond among themselves, who had developed a loyalty to the candidate and

then the president. that is absent in this administration and in this white house and i think that contributes to it. >> and we've seen 40% or higher turnover already in this administration which is unprecedented. and the dysfunction, the backbiting i think is a big reason for it. >> still to come, a historic moment for the president and korea. that was overshadowed by everything we were just talking about. plus i'm going to talk with congressman joaquin castro who sits on the less than functional house intelligence committee. and as we go to break, a quick note from the sports pages vladimir putin scored five goals in his annual exhibition hockey game. that's down from seven goals last year. could the 65-year-old forward be losing a step? "kasie d.c." back after this.

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mr. elliot, what's your wiwifi?ssword? wifi's ordinary. basic. do i look basic? nope! which is why i have xfinity xfi. it's super fast and you can control every device in the house. [ child offscreen ] hey! let's basement. and thanks to these xfi pods, the signal reaches down here, too. so sophie, i have an xfi password, and it's "daditude". simple. easy. awesome. xfinity. the future of awesome. welcome back. i want to talk for a minute about a piece just out from the washington post giving the lay of the land of the mueller probe as it approaches its one year

anniversary coming up this thursday. the post reports that trump has increasingly been plotting out his plans with his new lawyer, rudy giuliani, who is quoted in the piece as saying, we're only same wavelength. we've gone from defense to offense. the piece also contains this other detail. one confidant tells the paper the president vents to associates about the fbi raids on his personal attorney, michael cohen, as often as 20 times a day. trump reportedly gripes that he needs better, quote, tv lawyers to defend him on cable news. i guess, shawna thomas, that's what rudy giuliani is, maybe. >> i mean, yes, and people call him, they book him, he goes on television, he defends the president. i'm not sure president trump needs a tv lawyer. i think president trump needs a really good lawyer to just instruct him how to go through what he is currently going through. and i think as we saw over the

last couple of weeks, it seems that rudy giuliani makes the problems worse. >> right. >> and i don't think you want be that from your lawyer. i don't know how much rudy giuliani is getting paid, but i'm not sure he's worth the money. in terms of making interesting television, he does do that. >> it does seem, michael steele, to be a bit of a disconnect talksing about this tv watching president. bob mueller isn't going to end up potentially finding something that would condemn this president on tv. >> no, i mean, he doesn't need better surrogates, he needs a better set of facts. there is no indication here bob mueller is fiendishly tuned into fox news or other any other cable news channel to see any argument that vindicates the president from a television lawyer. everything we're seeing publicly ought to scare the hell out of people in the white house and around the president. >> 20 times he's talked about the michael cohen raid. you covered clinton when he was under siege. what's it like behind the scenes in the white house when you have

a president that is totally preoccupied with something like this? >> it's interesting. on the one hand it's debilitating, on the other hand if a white house has a good operation, i'm not saying this one necessarily does, there is an ability to compartmentalize. there is an ability to do work, they're preparing for a summit with the north korean president in singapore. they're able to do that. if you have a president as obsessed as he is with the mueller investigation and the raid and all of that, it makes it entirely difficult for anybody else to really do serious work. and it sets -- it casts a pall over everything else going on. this president, even more than president clinton, is obsessed with this particular investigation and it consumes him -- >> bill clinton wasn't? >> i think clinton was, but because this president is as volatile as he is and because this president happens to have something called twitter, bill clinton never -- >> right. >> -- never had, we are able to see the emotion that's therein

side him day after day after day. >> instead of it being hidden, okay. it was of course a major week for the trump administration in terms of foreign policy. on tuesday the president announced he's pulling the u.s. out of the iran nuclear deal. in the early hours of thursday morning, he welcomed home three americans who had been detained in north korea. and that same morning we learned the date and the location of the summit between the president and kim jong-un. and this weak a friend of the show philip rucker wrote a piece in the washington post posing this question. can the president's efforts on foreign policy erase the political damage of those scandals facing him here at home? at least one past president hoped that they would for him. phil pointed to a news conference that richard nixon held just a week after the saturday night massacre. listen to what he had to say at the beginning. >> we now come up close to the critical time in terms of the future of the mid east. and here, the outlook is far more hopeful than what we have

been through this past week. i think i could safely say that the chances for not just a cease fire which we presently have and which, of course, we have had in the mid east for sometime, but the outlook for a permanent peace is the best that it has been in 20 years. >> john meacham, those comments coming as quite literally the political world around richard nixon was crumbling. >> absolutely. ten months later he would be back in san clement ee having resigned. one of the things about the maelstrom of the presidency and one of the things we know from the nixon tapes is every investigation that poses a potentially existential threat to a president's future is consuming. it just is. but the best ones, even under siege, do manage to remember that they have a job to do, and that if they get that job right, somehow or another, maybe the

other stuff goes away or works out. i think the issue now, and trump is very much in this genre right now, the issue now is whether or not he can focus on substantive achievements that in the event director mueller comes back with things that don't reach all the way to trump, he can say, i did the people's business, i made america great again, whatever it is, while all this was going on. my problem, my suspicion is that he will be less able to do that, in part because, as mrs. obama said in the 2016 campaign, the presidency doesn't change who you are, it reveals who you are. and president trump is a puncher, and he just punches. that's the way he breathes. >> yeah, very interesting points. when we come back, congressman carlos curbelo joins me live. he and other house republicans are bucking party leadership to get something done on immigration policy. "kasie d.c." back after this.

this week a group of house republicans announced a new push to force a vote on immigration policy. their pathway to making that happen a maneuver known in congress as a discharge petition, it is a procedural move if successful would allow for a vote without the support of house leadership. this does not appear to be sitting well with house speaker paul ryan.

>> going down a path and having some kind of a spec consolidate on the floor that results in a veto doesn't solve a problem. we actually would like to solve this problem that is why i think it is important for us to come up with a solution that the president can support. >> joining me now, one of the signatories of that discharge petition and a key force behind it, republican congressman carlos curbelo of florida. congressman, thanks so much for being here tonight. i really appreciate it. >> kasie, good evening from miami. it's good to be with you. >> let's start with what the house speaker had to say. he spoke at some length earlier this week during his regular news conference, essentially saying he does not agree with the tact that you are taking with your colleagues. have you spoken to speaker paul ryan and what do you have to say in response to him? >> the speaker is a friend. we spoke numerous times right up until the point where we filed the discharge petition. and what i would tell him is that no one here is interested in a spectacle. we are interested in having a debate. we are actually interested in

answering the president's call to action in september of last year when he challenged congress to come up with a bipartisan solution to this immigration question in our country. every time the immigration issue comes up, congress -- if not congress, the house -- responds with paralysis and we're tired of that. we want to have a debate. we want members to bring their bills to the floor. and, by the way, this discharge petition process is probably the most constructive ever because we're not bringing forward one bill. we're offering the opportunity for four bills to come to the floor including one that is backed by immigration hard liners, and another that would be drafted and filed by the speaker of the house. so, we're actually offering all members the opportunity to participate in this debate and to convince their colleagues. and, yes, our goal is also to get a law passed, so we would like to pass something that this president can sign. >> congressman, how angry are you with house leadership for --

they have essentially chosen the views and path of the right wing of the house republican conference on this issue, over those of you who are facing very tough districts who care about this issue and have different feelings? >> well, the most frustrating part is the speaker says he wants a bill the president will sign. but in order for the president to sign a bill, it needs to get to his desk and that means it needs to pass the house and it needs to pass the senate with 60 votes. the bill that they have invested, i would say wasted months whipping is a bill that probably cannot pass the house because if it could it would have come to the floor already. and certainly cannot pass the senate. so, what i would argue -- and i have argued to the speaker -- is let's get a bipartisan bill done. i think he's coming around on that. and the process that we have proposed offers him the opportunity to file such a bill

that can get the president's support. and by the way, let's be clear here. the white house has put in paper a proposal that includes a path to citizenship for nearly 2 million young immigrants brought to this country as children known commonly as dreamers. so, the president who is without question considered the most hard line public figure on immigration in this country, is that that position, the process that he's -- some of these house conservatives have proposed of a bill is completely divorced to what the white house has put forward. >> i'm glad you brought up the white house because i also want to ask you. you say that the president is perceived to be one of the most -- the hardest line. but there are some people who work for him who are influencing his thinking who we've seen potentially take a harder line than the president. one of them is john kelly. he made these comments earlier. let's take a look and talk about it. >> let me step back and tell you that the vast majority of the

people that move illegally into the united states are not bad people. they're not criminals, they're not ms13. but they're also not people that would easily assimilate into the united states. they are overwhelmingly rural people and the countries they come from, 4th, 5th, 6th grade education is the norm. they're coming here for a reason and i sympathize with the reason, but the laws are the laws. >> congressman, in your view, should john kelly clarify or perhaps apologize for making those comments about immigrants? >> i think he should clarify. general kelly lived here in miami for five years. he knows what an immigrant community looks like. he knows that a lot of these immigrants who are in our country may not be -- may not have college degrees, for example, but they do care for american children. they do care for older americans who might be sick. they are fundamental to the lives of a lot of american families all over this country, not just in miami. now, general kelly is right in

saying that we should not promote illegal immigration, and he's also right in saying that most of these people are good people who want to work in our country. and, by the way, something else that general kelly said is that we should provide a path to citizenship for those under the protections of the tps program, which i agree with him as well. so, the point is there's a lot of room to work together here. there is definitely an achievable compromise. and what we want is for speaker ryan to allow the house to work its will to build that compromise and to get it to the president's desk. we have been debating the immigration issue in this country, kasie, for 12 years since president bush first proposed immigration reform in 2005-2006. let's get something done. we have nothing to show for this debate after 12 years. >> congressman carlos curbelo, thanks very much for your time. looking forward to seeing you on the hill this week i'm sure. this will be very much in the focus in the coming days. thank you. >> that's right, kasie, good night.

>> meanwhile immigration policy aimed at preserving american jobs is instead jeopardizing them on maryland's eastern shore. and with them, a beloved, by me and many others who have family who grew up in maryland, a beloved summer tradition. in annapolis, maryland crab season is in full swing as locals and tourists come to take a crack at blue crabs. 80 miles away in hoopers island? >> i take 12,000 pound a day. >> the heart of the crab industry is feeling crushed. >> this is the picking room. as you can see it's empty. >> the island has been using h 2 b visas to hire crab pickers for decades, mostly from mexico. a trump many posed cap on the visas and lottery system means hoopers island is missing an estimated 40% of their seasonal workers. >> i got lucky obviously, but it's not right for this company to have them and the rest of the other companies not to get them. >> half a mile down the road,

harry phillips can't hire enough people. >> this is the busiest time of the season. every restaurant wants crab meat on mother's day. it's going to affect us to the point we may have to totally close. >> in 2016 president trump won this district by 14 points. in part because of his promise to help american workers and crackdown on immigration. but now in this community, built around crabbing, nearly everyone is grappling with the consequence. >> our businesses very much suffered because of the loss of the people here, the trucks aren't running, the boats aren't working. our hours are less. >> i voted for trump because he was a businessman. i voted for him because that's what i am. i'm a small business operator. i just don't think donald trump knows what's going on down here right now. because he's for business, then you're putting businesses out of work here. >> as people make for the beach, prices forz crab meat are expected to spike. >> crab meat will be very expensive. yep, it sure will because there's not going to be enough around.

>> and the community is asking to save american businesses and an american tradition by protecting migrant workers. >> there's no americans that apply for it. >> no american is going to do that job. >> i do not have any americans that wants to do this job. >> they're not like the illegal people trying to sneak in. >> they're not illegals. they don't climb over walls. they come here, they work like six, seven months, they go back home to mexico, 99% of them. >> still asked if they would vote for trump again, it was a unanimous yes. >> yes, i probably vote for mr. trump right now. i think this needs to be brought to mr. trump's attention. a lot of companies depend on these people come here that have seasonal jobs. and without them we'll all be out of business. >> it's worth mentioning the difficulty with the visas dates back to the obama administration. and one more thing. according to the baltimore sun, congressman andy harris says federal immigration officials have agreed to approve thousands more guest worker visas. but maryland is only going to have access to a portion of those and the people who run the

plants are saying that it is probably not enough. some great reporting there by our intrepid producer kendall bright man. when we come back i talk to senator joe manchin about being in the fight of his life in a state that overwhelmingly went for president trump. plus, dan balls spent months in the midwest. we're going to unpack his epic report on the voters there and how their opinions are evolving over time. that's up next. ♪ racing isn't the only thing on my mind. and with godaddy, i'm making my ideas real. when i created my businesses, i needed a way to showcase it. ♪ with godaddy you can get a website to sell online. and it will look good. i made my own way. now it's time to make yours. get started at godaddy.com ♪ everything is working, working just like it should ♪

this week's republican primary races gave at least a little bit of a sigh of relief for the gop in one race. ex-coal executive and ex-convict don blankenship was dee veeted in west virginia by attorney general patrick mori si. i caught up with senator joe manchin to ask him whether he was concerned about the contentious upcoming race for his seat. >> you either run scared or

unopposed. every opponent i have is a worthy opponent. they wouldn't have gotten to that level if he this weren't. they all have something to bring to the table. i look at it from a learning curve, if there is something i missed. i never run against anybody, i just run for the office. if people want to run against me because i haven't done a good enough job, let's talk about it. tell me what i've done, give me a thought process to the conclusion i vote the way i did. i don't vote because of a democrat party or republican party. i vote for what i think is good for our country and what helps the state of west virginia. i think 36 years of service proves that. >> are you confident you can win? >> absolutely. and here's -- let me say this, too, about don blankenship. and i have said this. there is only -- we only have one person on the republican side that was running that was a true conservative west virginia republican. i've known don blankenship for a long time. we've had our problems and our challenges with each other. i acknowledge that. but as far you cannot deny the

man was not a pure true conservative republican and a west virginian. >> did you think the ads that he ran at the end of the campaign were more racist? >> i don't know -- you know, i would not -- i like to think it wasn't. the terms he used how he used them, i would never take that course. and if don felt that that was not -- he was explaining it from his, his upbringing or basically the culture where he comes from, that's not how we talk where i come from in west virginia. and don is on that kentucky/west virginia border. i can't say. i have not heard that before in those -- italian americans, chinese americans, japanese americans, you know, we're all ethnic of some derivative. but the way it was said, it was taken in the connotation it might not have been flattering to a person who is a proud american no matter what their descent may be. >> is there any circumstance you would take a position in the trump cabinet instead of seeing

your election bid through? >> you know, i looked -- i want to serve the state of west virginia, the people of america. i really don't -- >> so you're all in on your reelection no matter what? >> oh, i am. i'm here to fight. i know i'm in a fight. i know how it is. i know my state has changed but the state knows me. they don't look at joe manchin as a democrat, they look at joe manchin as an american. i hope it stays that way. >> he talked to chuck todd and what he said about mitch mcconnell. i don't condone any of that, i think it's horrific. it would of course be an understatement to say manchin is in the heart of trump country. dan balls, loyalty and unease among trump's base in the midwest. dan spent the past 15 months tracing the arc of how trump voters in formerly democratic strong holds view this presidency. dan, what a project to be able to have the chance to spend so

much time doing this. what was your overall take away about where these voters in the midwest who gave this election to donald trump feel now about his presidency? >> i put them into three categories. the first category is still all-in. that's a significant percentage of the people who voted for him. they think he speaks to them, of them, for them. they like the policies he's trying to put in place and the degree to which they think he's not been successful they blame others. >> it's somebody else's fault. >> right. they think he's doing what he was promising to do and they believe that in the end he'll be as successful as the swamp will allow. there is a second category which i would say is not that big, but these are people who voted for him and they've had it. they -- they've watched him in action. they don't like what they have seen. more in terms of the way he conducts himself, and they say, i won't vote for him again. and then there is that group in

the middle. i think these are the people who really hold the key to his future. these are what i call the conflicted trump supporters. they backed him, they may not have been for him initially in their republican primaries. many of them weren't, but they decided he was better than the alternative, hillary clinton. they thought that he would shake things up. they wanted change. but as they have watched him, they're unnerved by the way he handles himself. nobody likes the tweets. or almost nobody likes the tweets, we know that. it goes beyond that. it's a sense of a presidency that is so volatile that he doesn't have control of his own emotions. and as one of them said to me, we kind of know how this kind of thing ends and it doesn't necessarily end well. >> what do you think that this means for republicans who are facing voters here in a handful of months? >> it's hard to say. it's the hardest question for me to answer, is to extrapolate from what people think about donald trump at this point.

i would say two things. one is we know from president obama that it's very difficult to transfer your coalition to a group of republican candidates in a midterm election. >> sure. >> so that's one thing. i think the other is the degree to which you have people who are conflicted about donald trump, how enthusiastic are they going to be to turn out in the fall. some of them will be. you know, they're loyal republicans and they're going to go out and vote republican, but others may not be. that's the hard part for me to measure. >> shawna thomas, what is your key question in this context is >> i think you said the smallest of your three buckets is the people who said i'm done with donald trump. how republicans use that in 2018, how far can they go for the president or against the president?

it seems like he still has a lot of people who are in his corner who think he will make their lives better. did you get any sense from people if a republican tries to run a little bit against president trump and chart their own path, will that be successful? >> i think that's a perilous course for most of the republicans. and you see very few republican candidates doing that. >> willing to do that. >> one of the people i talked to who's been active in the party over the years said he sees two groups of republicans now, those who are running for office, they're behind donald trump and they're promoting donald trump and they're trying -- they may not be exactly like donald trump, but they're not trying to put any distance. then he said there are others who are uncomfortable with trump. and he said they're kind of -- they're pulling away from the party a little bit. they're less active in the party. so, that's the difference. i mean, this sort of i will call it this middle group. some are conflicted but still with him because of the policies, and some are conflicted and they're much less with him because of the conduct. they haven't broken with him yet. most of them don't say, i'm not going to vote for him. i don't know where they're going to be in 2020. as i said, it's very difficult

to know exactly how they'll turnout in 2018. >> dan balls, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> appreciate it. very much enjoyed, commend the report to all of you as well in the washington post. shawna thomas, eli stoke always, michael steele, great to have you. "kasie d.c." is back right after this.

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hatred, what we need in the united states is not lawless but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another. and a feeling of justice to those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. >> that was newly declared presidential candidate robert kennedy speaking on the back of a flatbed truck in indianapolis on the night that dr. martin luther king jr. was killed in 1968. it's just one of the countless historical snapshots included in john meacham's new book, "the soul of america: the battle for our better angels." and john, there's no question that this president is blowing through norm after norm after norm. these structures that have defined and kind of held our government together. my question for you is, how resilient is our country?

how did you -- you walk through that in some ways in this new book. >> we're incredibly resilient. and we're going to get through this. my message, my argument from history is not a partisan point is not that we should relax because we've gotten through tough times in the past. it's that we have to get to work and learn from what happened before and how we got through it. in many ways, the presidency has been a force for good. and sometimes it's been a force for ill. and if the presidency is often the table or on the wrong side of history, then it's up to the people, it's up to the press, it's up to the congress, it's up to the courts, to answer what lincoln called our better angels. we always become stronger the wider we have opened our arms. and that is not a partisan point. whenever we've looked at the jeffersonian insertion, the more stronger our country has become. there's a white ethnic

politician, a boston irish catholic speaking to an african-american crowd in indianapolis telling them that he was breaking the news to them that martin luther king had been assassinated. that was from his heart. and i would hope that we all have the same capacity in our hearts and despite the tweets and despite the chaos that we stick to those angels, we make the case, we protest, we resist and we move forward. >> you like to say that character is destiny. what do you think of the character of president trump? how does that stack up to the character of those who have led before him? >> well, everyone is flawed. we live in a fallen world. it is not perfectible. we seek a more perfect union. it is unquestionable this is the most unconventional.

and, in many ways, perhaps the most volatile president we have ever had. these are perilous times. again, not arguing that we have cultural zoloft from history. but we can look back and see that the country was not always what we wanted it to be and we have to keep working. >> the book is "the soul of america." i'm sorry i don't have it in studio, it's already home on my bookshelf to get started next weekend. thank you so much, jon, for your time tonight. i really appreciate it. in our next hour, the trump ♪ only tylenol® rapid release gels have laser drilled holes. they release medicine fast, for fast pain relief. tylenol®

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tensions are running high. the decision distances the united states from allies who have kept their embassies in tel aviv. >> and more fallout for michael cohen. there's new reporting about consulting services he offered after donald trump won the presidency. >> and growing backlash after a white house aide reportedly mocked senator john mccain. his daughter megan says she was promised a public apology, but so far there's been nothing.