boost optimum. be up for life. my thanks to all the friend to take this jenny with me every day. that does it for our hour. i'll nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts next. nothing about my warriors. they will come back. it's too raw. tomorrow you can haze me. >> i'm not going to haze you. nobody wants to see the rockets and the cavs. okay? actually, nobody wants to see the rockets and the celtics. america wants lebron versus steph and durant. >> it was a raw nerve. we have made up. >> let's go cavs. fair enough. if it's wednesday, it's spy games. let's take two. tonight, the conspiracy cycle. >> we now call it spygate. you are calling it spygate.

>> is the president's fear of a deep state throwing american democracy off the deep end. plus the changing face of the democrat party. how female candidates are shaking up the mid terms. >> where no one is unseen, no one is unheard, and no one is uninspired. and later, a game changer. the nfl takes its own political stand against players who take a knee for their political views. this is "mtp daily," and it starts right now. good evening, i'm chuck todd here in washington, welcome to "mtp daily." we begin tonight with multiple developments involving the russia investigation. i know, i know, but it's just within the last few hours. let's try to sort it out for you. in a major reversal for now, the president's lawyer, rudy giuliani is now suggesting that

the president should sit for an interview with bob mueller. giuliani told the "washington post," quote, i guess i'd rather do the interview if it gets it over with. it makes my client happy. speaking of mueller interviews, nbc news has learned that the president's son-in-law, jared kushner sat for a second interview with the special counsel in a six-plus hour grilling that apparently covered everything from the campaign to the transition to jim comey's firing. that's according to a source familiar with the matter. it's important to note that he's been in front of mueller twice, one would assume if you are being interviewed by mueller you are not a target. this comes as kushner's lawyer confirms he has been granted a permanent security clearance, which would suggest that his exposure is limited. we are told that those kind of clearances are generally delayed otherwise. all of these developments come as the president's attacks on the mueller investigation look less like criticism and more like propaganda. and that is perhaps the most

important development of the day. the president is now claiming that a spy was somehow planted in his campaign by a criminal deep state for political purposes. think about that. i'm not kidding. that's his claim, the fuel argument from the sitting president of the united states. is there any evidence to support any of that? arguably, no. but there is evidence that the president is using his allies in the house to find the, quote, evidence for him. he basically said as much today. >> all you have to do is look at the basics and you will see. it looks like a very serious event but we'll find out. when they look at the documents, i think people are going the see a lot of bad things happened. i hope it's not so. because if it is, there has never been anything like it in the history of our country. i hope it's not true, but it looks like it is. >> so he has no idea. but he is certainly giving a hint as the what he hopes his allies find. those documents refer to a heating the president personally

brokered allowing his allies in the house to personally comb through information about the russia investigation. ryan ghibli said point blank democrats are not invited to see the documents. they are livid. they want both parties to be briefed or they are not allowed. the president today said he wants quote total transparenty and hinted democrats could go if they wanted. we'll see. but, folks, this latest spectacle illustrates an alarming cycle where presidential falsehoods and conspiracy theories, some might call that propaganda is ampl amplified by republicans in congress. not all but a significant chunk of them and their goals to discredit the russia investigation before it's completed. the goal isn't necessarily to prove lie it's simply to sew doubts about the truth.

let's get right to the panel. welcome all. >> thank you. >> first let me get to the developments of day, the significance of the jared kushner news. >> we don't know why he got the permanent security clearance, we just know that it happened. i still have questions about it my. i wonder. because at the end of the day the president decides approximate control of classified information. it's not controlled by statute. i wonder if this happened through the normal chain of business or whether there was an intervention from the top. >> an interesting important point. but the fact that kushner has gone twice before mueller. there are two ways to think about it. roger stone, michael cohen, donald trump jr. and pars jr. haven't gone in front of mueller. but kushner has been, twice. >> i think the dogs that haven't

barked are the dogs that are in trouble. you are not going to be called if you are the target of an investigation. you are ifg given the opportunity at the end but it puts you in an uncomfortable position. the fact that kushner has been there twice, even though it was for a very long time. it's actually a good news day for jared kushner. >> that's how i look at it. >> both on that and however he got it on the security clearance. >> rudy giuliani says interview. now he wants to sit down. this feels like it's every week it is change the story the change the story. >> it's all made up. it's all kind of fictionalized storylines that create a moment to get through a current moment that they don't like. distract over here, make noise over there. the bottom line is they are very worried about where this investigation is and where it ultimately may end up. this idea that the president is going to sit down in front of mueller is not something,

despite what the president says, that anyone around him wants him to do. i doubt will it happen. again, it's like, just move the pieces around on the table enough to pretend there is motion in a particular direction. the president wants to be cofreightive, transparency. the meeting on -- >> oh, yes, transparency. >> we want transparency but we don't want the democrats to be in the room. they know what happens once they are actually in room. >> they may tell you what is kpa actually in the papers. >> what's in the appears. exactly. a lot of this is the administration sort of moving through the game on their pace in their way keeping evan distracted with talking points and bright shiny objects that go down rabbit holes to nowhere. >> i want the show some of the president's tweets. let me put two together. look at how things have turn around on the criminal deep state. phony collusion with russia, a made up scam, then they are caught in a major spy scandal the likes of which this country

has never seen before. james clapper, turns out he was happy that the fbi was spying on his campaign. no, james clapper i'm not happy. spying on a campaign would be illegal and a scandal to boot. let me show you what james clapper said. here's what we think he was referring to. >> was the fbi spying on trump's campaign? >> no, i -- no, they were not. they were spying on a term i don't particularly like but on what the russians were doing, trying to understand were the russians infiltrating tritrying gain access and leverage and influence, which is what they do. >> why doesn't he like that? he should be happy. >> he should be. >> he's happy because he's happy to leap on any word you say that can be useful to him that he can take out of context. >> right. >> and just throw up a lot of smoke around what's going on. what we are seeing here is the fascinating waging of asymmetric

warfare between the president who has this bully pulpit and is just absolutely unconstrained by facts or propriety in terms of using it. and the special counsel, who has one weapon on his side, which is the grand jury. >> yeah. >> but that's a weapon that he only deploy appropriately and intermittently. he can't stand up for himself. so trump is winning the week in terms of making an argument that a lot of people are buying even if it's got nothing to it. >> i just -- both of you are saying this is winning the week or he is always doing and this is the narrative to get through that moment. i have to say something feels different about right now. we have these moments of intensity and they wax and wane. this is a particularly intense moment. this is a remarkable moment. trump is ordering the justice department to open investigation into the people investigating him. he is not just throwing bombs at the justice department. he is actually asserting

political control over the apparatus of law enforcement. that is new. that's a line he is crossing. and with help from the republican allies like devin nunes and so forth on the hill he is engineering or going along with the engineering of the outing of an intelligence asset who was trying to figure out what russia was doing and turning this into the scandal. i mean, this is not something we have seen before, even from this president. and so where this is going -- feels tight. >> what is striking about that point is that republicans are on the watch, holding up the torchlight for this president to take down the democratic institutions that just a few short years ago they were officer venly out there going up against the obama administration over -- fervently out there going up against the obama administration over, spending precious time and resources investigating ban ghazi. so this is a space that when it's all said and done -- take

trump out of this. this is really not so much about him anymore as it is about the republicans who control the house and the senate who from day one day in and day out have allowed this craziness to fester and now to your very important point change the very fabric of how we look at these institutions and what they mean going forward. >> i want to read a quote from gary casper often. it's about vladimir putin. but it may ring familiar. on putin's propaganda -- on putin's propaganda he said this, it's about destroying the notion of truth. of course it aims at democrats institutions because if nothing is true then everything is relative. what's the difference between democracy and dictatorship? they are all bad? everybody is corrupt. >> hannah errant wrote this decades ago. this is way propaganda works most effectively. you start with this lie that there was an fbi plant inside

the campaign to spy on donald trump for the purpose of spying on his campaign and not getting him elected which they didn't do he will very well. and then you lay impropriety on top of it. his ordering an investigation into the investigators is improper. also let's not let the congressional republicans off the hook here. they should not go to that meeting without their democratic counter-parts. they shouldn't be demanding that meeting but they shouldn't go to it without their democratic counter-parts. everybody is going the rue this day. >> speaking of throwing something into -- that explodes things, maybe it's nitroglyce n nitroglycerin, mr. clapper is still talking. he did an interview on news hour. later tonight he will say he has personally concluded that russians not only influences but decided the outcome of the to 16 election. quote, 80,000 votes in three

states. >> i don't think he can know that. >> i was going to say, that feels -- he said personal conclusion. at the end of the day it's just clapper's opinion. >> yeah. jim clapper is under a lot of pressure right now. and he's being -- >> he is. >> his reputation is being sleddsled shredded by the president and others for hoping to portray this grand conspiracy to help trump lose the election except they forgot to tell everyone until after the election. dr. strange love fallure to launch the -- device. i don't know about that statement? >> i have heard him say it elsewhere. we don't know. we can never know for sure. i think what he is saying is it only makes sense that they spend this much money that the election was so close. >> when you have a close election, everything matters.

>> failing to go to wisconsin could have thrown it. we can't know that. but what we can know is this is a really dire and important moment for democracy. and we have to do our best to make sure it doesn't happen again. i don't see the evidence, given what the homeland security secretary said yesterday oh, she wasn't aware of that that they are really making sure that they won't let this happen again. >> i'm a he not sure what comes of good if we have a former administration official suddenly deciding to put out their own conclusions. that's going to create a he said she said -- while you want to talk about lack of trust in institutions. what if we have an exiled government and an -- >> trump is the only one who gets to attack? >> no, no no. >> it is a legitimate worry. >> democrats play by the rules and trump isn't. >> it goes to a bigger point. i think chuck you put your finger on something that i think is essentially important here. it's something that worked to donald trump's advantage, that everyone has played by the rules. >> i know. he uses your integrity against you. >> he uses your integrity

against you. and folks, we have got to stop it. you have got to be able to push back against the crazy in order to show that it is in fact crazy. >> of course when you go down to his level you end up at marco rubio. >> exactly. >> can i tell you -- >> there is a way to do that, folks. trust me, there is a way to do that without getting rubio. >> there is one person who i think has been extraordinarily clever at pushing back on the president without looking like he is pushing back on the president. listen to the latest from rod rosenstein. >> the dictionary defines piling on as joining other people in criticizing someone usually in an unfair manner. i also have experience with that. [ laughter ] so i am definitely against piling on, no matter what definition you use. >> rod rosenstein is going to be -- there is a chance he is -- history will treat him kindest of all. >> right now, there is a lot of

disgluntlement among former justice department official types of both parties at what rod rose roz has been doing. he has been appeasing the president by continually giving grounds, okay see this, okay. >> he has also been protecting mutualer. >> the question is, is he giving up by inches so that there will be nothing worth preserving at the end of the day. here's my argument. we don't know what rod rosenstein knows about what mueller is up to. >> but he knows more than any of us do. >> right. >> if mueller in some far off way may final get to the final pars of this investigation, obstruction and russia and completion and so forth but that's not emment, this looks one way, he is appeasing. if mueller is a week or two away from something and he just has to get across the finish line then how we look at the apiecement measures in retrospect is going to be

different. >> one person's appeasement is another person's deflection. it's hard to know from the outside how to look at it. >> this whole spying controversy i have a feeling will be tiny and irrelevant in three months. i'm convinced of it. >> like the taping. >> stick around. up ahead in the battle of stacey versus stacey, we already know who the winner is, it's stacey. last night's georgia gubernatorial victory is more evidence of a trend, not just more women running for office, but winning nominations.

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joining me now is a staff writer for "the new yorker," ander thou of the future is history, how totalitarianism reclaimed russia. ms. guessen, welcome back to the show. >> thank you for having me. >> i want to use the sort of the tweet we saw this morning. from the president. because it may you even more prescient than anybody realized two years ago when he came into office. so the president included a non-truth about the fbi and all of these things. and he writes this, look how things have turned around on the criminal deep state. they go after phony collusion with russia, made up scam and end up getting caught in a major spy scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before. what goes around comes around. what does that tweet mean to you? what due read into it? >> it reads weirdly familiar. et cetera a not familiar in the sense that the communication style of the american president is in any similar the putin's smuks style. that's not the case. what is the case, though, is

that they both -- you know, that kind of propaganda serves to undermine any accepts of a shared reality. and that's a really frightening thing and that's an impossible thing to negotiate. that's what is destroying the politics in this country. >> what -- why is it that it's been so frankly fairly easy for the president to do this? is it the communication tools? is he just unique about this? as it turned out we had a larger chunk of the country that was more susceptible? what is your read? i think there is a lot of us who probably arrogantly believed oh, this will never happen in america. >> two things. i think a sense of shared reality had actually been eroding for a very long time. more broadly, trust in the system had been eroding for a very long time. and donald trump was obviously the master of using that. now he has the bully pulpit. the trump tweet is an impossible thing to negotiate.

you can't ignore it and you can't take it seriously. when you take it seriously you are playing into his hands. but he is the president. you can't ignore what he has to say. >> it's funny, you have outlined the trap that i always say all the time i am well aware we are this the trap. people say don't cover his tweets. okay. then what do you do? >> you don't have a choice. >> right? and then the question is how do you get folks to put this stuff in context, to trust that actually there need to be context the these things. frankly we have been searching for that formula? >> look, we are going to lose in the long run -- i halloween we are going to emerge from this with losses. there is no way not to lose. there are just ways to minimize our losses. and fact checking is incredibly important. creating context is incredibly important. being able to call the president is a liar is incredibly important. >> so you wrote this, and i'm curious if you would revise it today. you outlined you call it your rules for surviving an auto accuracy. you put this out right after

president trump's election. your rules were there, number one, believe the auto accurate. what does that mean? when he was talking about his intentions two years ago, a year and a half ago people -- you know, if you recall, people were talking about how he was going to become presidential, how he was never going to introduce tariffs, how he was never going to build a wall, how he was never going to do any number of things that he said he was going to do. in fact, he's doing exactly what he said he was going to do. and there was really no reason to doubt that his intentions were serious. >> why do you think we all fell for the -- i'm with you. there was at love stuff that felt like empty promises. >> i think that we are taken in by our own failure of the imagination. you know, it was impossible to imagine donald trump as president. and rather than make the effort to man it we would try to figure out how we are going to work around that. >> number two on your list is do not be taken in by small signs of normality.

welcome to the republican party in 2018. >> you know, i think it's in even so much about normalization. it's actually what i'm really concerned. and dalia lit wick had a column about this just a couple of weeks ago. you wake up every morning you realize that the world hasn't ended, your kid is still going to school and you are going to the grocery store and you don't need to be so catastrophic. that's what i mean by small signs of normality. so far, the world hasn't ended. >> fact check true on that one. number three is institutions will not save you. why do you have so little faith in institutions? >> it's not that i have little faith in institutions. that institutions need a kind of consensus, and often they need societal pressure in order to function. and we are having issues with that. you know, even the courts need major societal pressure in order

to function. but also a lot of things that we think are institutions are actually norms. we have learned an incredible thing about that in the last year and a half. anything i say about that now will sound obvious but a year and a half it wasn't so obvious. >> essentially you are saying the people don't just sit back. speak out. you say all those last three things meaning what, get active? keep fighting it? >> i think yes, get active on the one hand but you have to be selective how you get active. every so often people want to figure out a way to get a group of psychiatrists together to remove trump or say, you know, there was the hamilton electors movement in december of 2016. >> right. >> but those are things that are fine if we are never going to have a presidential election or president ever again because we don't want a group of psychiatrists that has the power to remove an american president,

right? we have to be mindful of what we go into the post trump era with. it will happen eventually. everything ends. >> that's what i remind everybody. everybody needs to ask themselves how did we get here in the first place before we figure out how to solve this problem. thank you for coming on and sharing your views. coming up, the nfl says if players don't want to stand for the national anthem too bad. they can stay in the locker room or if they do want to kneel prepare to be fined. a lot of people are not happy about what was supposed to be a compromise. we'll be right back. what matters to you? you got a1c, heart, diet, and exercise. slide 'em up or slide 'em down. so let's see. for most of you, it's lower a1c. but only a few of you are thinking about your heart. fact is, even though it helps to manage a1c, type 2 diabetes still increases your risk of a fatal heart attack or stroke.

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welcome back. tonight i'm obsessed with president trump's phone. we learned earlier this week that president trump has gone rogue with his own phone service. we all know how that feels. according to politico, he uses two cell phones. the one he uses for tweeting doesn't have security to prevent hacking or surveillance. he is resistant to switching out his phone on a monday low basis because he considers it inconvenient. you might say that's irresponsible, puts national security at risk and it's like having an unsecured private e-mail server. a lot of people had a lot to say about unsecured private e-mail servers. >> what she did, meghan, is

really unprecedented and incredibly reckless. >> she is just going to get away with this in the sense that she grossly was negligent. see mishandled classified information and thousand she wants to be commander in chief. >> how could you be commander in chief when you are accepting sensitive information on a server that you know others can spy on? >> those folks weren't alone. there was one more republican who had something to say about the security of a certain e-mail server. >> her illegal server that put our national security at grave risk. hillary clinton should have been prosecuted and gone to jail for what she did. >> i wonder if we are going to hear from any of those folks about the president of the united states using an unsecure phone line for tweeting. our phone lines are open now. warning, unsecured. we'll be right back.

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we are writing the next chapter of georgia's future, where no one is unseen, no one is unheard, and no one is uninspired. >> welcome back. that was stacey abrams, get to know her. she's the woman who won the democratic gubernatorial primary last night in georgia against what happened to be another woman named stacey. this is starting to look like a trend. women are winning a lot of primaries all over the place and it's not cookie cutter type candidates either. they are different kincandidate. amy mcgrath, a fighter pilot won the presumary in ken condition. and lindsey fletcher won against laura mowsier. that was like the stacey primary, woman versus woman in that one.

72 women have won a majority party nomination for the u.s. house. that is already more than the total number of women who were nominated in the 1990 election cycle. it wasn't that long ago. and guess what. we have 35 and then some more state primaries to go. so there is going to be quite a few women nominees this cycle. will it translate into victories for democrats in november? let me bring in shear boostos of illinois. she was one of the few candidates in a district that donald trump carried, being a democrat, who actually won by a land slide herself. congresswoman boostos welcome back to the show. >> thank you, chuck. >> this has been in some ways organic with the number of women candidates wanting to run this year for congress. and in some cases it's been a recruitment too much of it's been the party wants to go out and find new candidates, find women candidates who want to do this. what has been your case to women to get them to run for office

who have never thought about politics before? what's been your pitch to them? >> that this is the way to change the world. you know, i believed that way before i ran for any office myself. it is through public service that we can change the world. i think what these women are seeing is that we are in great need of wanting to change the world. i'm so glad you started this segment with stacey abrams. i literally just off the phone with her. i was walking down the capitol steps after votes and she gave me a call back. and i am so proud of her. she is not only would she be the first american female governor, but she would be a great governor, period, regardless of her gender, regardless of her race. she would be fantastic. and i am all in for her. glad you maenged amy mcgrath, chuck, because you know as the first marine female fighter pilot, this was all against the odds. when you are going against a mayor of lexington who has a great deal of wealth -- she gets

in on her own. it wasn't even a major recruitment effort. but she wanted to change the world. and here she is winning this primary, a potentially tough primary and she was the winner. >> it's interesting you bring up amy mcgrath. it was the dccc, the national democrats, they wanted the person they knew, right? and you understand the argument. he's been there before, he's run for office before, he's the mayor, and mayors generally do well in congressional elections. there has been this fear among some national democrats to roll the dice with inexperienced candidates. you just talked about amy mcgrath as a potential super star. what do you think the dccc missed with her? >> well, i would argue that the dccc didn't miss anything. i supported amy mcgrath from the starmt i am the chair of the heartland engagement strategy. kentucky is part of the

heartland. >> but they had been pushing the mayor as their candidate. >> that was the narrative that was out there but not the reality of it. i can tell you this, when folks from the dccc went down to kentucky they talked with amy mcgrath and they talked to jim gray. there wasn't really a matter of jim gray pushing her aside. but i can say personally i'm very pleased with the outcome. i want more women to be serving here. again, not just because they are women, but because the things that we fight for are typically just a little bit different, more family friendly, more child friendly, looking out for the -- just making sure that people who aspire to the middle class can get there. i mean it's what we stan for as women. >> let me ask you -- it's interesting you brought up stacey abrams on your own talking about that you have exchanged phone messages for her in congratulations. you and i know there are plenty of democratic consultants who

would have said stacey abrams, i don't know if you can win statewide. and there was this sense that oh, no you have got to try to appease the middle here. there seems to be a new argument, progressive versus electability argument, that it's not being received the same way as it used to. what do you think changed with voters when it comes to the question of electability versus progressive values? >> i don't think it is an either or. i think what people are looking for is people who lid their lives, who had some challenges, but people who will show up to every nook and cranny of a congressional district or a state. gladstone, illinois, small towns, he show up, listen to people, and you know, enough of the phoniness that's associated with politics. listen to people, tell them your own story, and you know, then

it's our job once elected to fight for people and do what's right. i think when it comes to stacey abrams she is a great person, she's smart she's accomplished and people didn't see one bit of phoniness in her. that's why she won this race last night. >> it is interesting that you use the word phoniness. give her advice to talk to a trump voter. you have had trump voters voting for you. what's your advice. >> i don't think she needs my advice but if i were to talk to anybody running for office, it's exactly what i just said. showing up, not taking any voter for granted, asking for this vote. using these two ears and this mouth proportionately. people love to -- if you are in politics, and i tell you what, sometimes i'm like just, please, can you just listen. if you do that and take what we have learned from those listening sessions and then do something about it i think that's the secret to success. it's showing up, it's working

hard, listening and then getting results for people. >> congresswoman shear boosos, i'm going to leave it there. democrat from the illinois part of the quad cities. up ahead, the nfl takes an official stand on players kneeling during the natural anthem. and the trump administration is declaring victory. we'll be right back. picking the right style takes time. one picky customer shouldn't take all your time. need something printed? the business advisors at office depot can assist with exactly what your business needs to grow.

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welcome back. today in meet the mid terms, republican missouri governor eric gritens, we told you he is not running for re-election this year but he is running to save his job and has take tony the air waves as lawmakers consider whether to impeach him. he faces allegations of sex misconduct and abuse. but he is blaming the scandal on his enemies and the media. he is doing it in paid ads. >> court documents prove the fake news paid thousands for allegations against gritens. a liberal st. louis prosecutor funded by george sorrows pressed charges and democratic leadership orchestrated the false attacks. don't get the liberals get away with it. >> the republican controlled legislature decided to deal with impeachment here. missouri republicans have called on greitenss to resign, including the likely nominee to

run against mccaskell this fall. but that's not the only ads. >> a governor under fire. a capitol awash of corruption. in the middle, attorney general josh holly. >> obviously, this is all a headache for republicans, which shows no sign of stopping any time soon. if you were the scc and you put up that ad yesterday the thing you would love is eric greitenss going on tv. and that's what he did. the nscc pulling their her out. we'll be right back. protected against fraud, theft and trafficking. this is a financial transaction secure from hacks and threats others can't see. this is a patient's medical history made secure - while still available to their doctor at their fingertips. this is an asteroid live-streamed to millions of viewers from 220 miles above earth.

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no one thought much of itm at all.l people said it just made a mess until exxonmobil scientists put it to the test. they thought someday it could become fuel and power our cars wouldn't that be cool? and that's why exxonmobil scientists think it's not small at all. energy lives here. time now for "the lid." the nfl announced a new policy today. all players who are on the field during the national anthem must stand according to a new league real. they can remain in the locker room without penalty but

kneeling can be subject to a fine. does this solve the pr problem? >> for the time being. look, this is one of those compromises. you had owners like jerry jones who were adamant in the argument that there should be a high price to pay for these types of protests. i think they didn't go as far as they do in basketball. >> right. >> but the fact of the matter is, this seems to be the space. even though the nfl players' association, the union is upset on behalf of the players, i think this works itself out. this is such a non-story. >> i agree it is a non-story except they have continued to play into it. i don't know why the nfl bothers with night exactly. >> to me they have actually created. ruth, what i don't get here is so they are saying they don't want players to express their political views but the players have to abide by the owners' political views. that's what this comes across as. >> the players aren't -- the good news about this policy is that the players aren't

conscripted to stand there when they don't want to be standing there. i personally don't see what the big deal is about kneeling, kneeling feels likeme. but the players aren't able to, in an appropriate, respectful way to express they views. they don't have to be conscri conscripted, but they don't get to -- remember the athletes with the black power salute, they don't get to express their views during that time. i have never understood why it was so disrespectful to the flag to have a cow about them doing it. it seems to me to be respectful to the constitution to allow some respectful things. >> here's why they did it, though. pull up the mike pence twitter feed today. >> i understand that. >> mike pence believes, hey, winning, that's what he tweeted. winning. >> winning by silencing. >> winning. >> culture war winning. >> and you're like, because you got the nfl to be cowed by

donald trump. >> i think the long-term solution to all of this is just to de-politicize the games entirely. we didn't used to have all of these -- you know, the standing and singing "god bless america" in the seventh inning. you know, this goes back to the pageantry of the hyperpatriotism after 9/11. sports really doesn't need any of that and it's just asking for trouble. >> all the different kinds when we've gotten into these things about doing the national anthem. it's always been a around a time of when we've been, you know, about our democracy and stuff like that, so it's showing respect in a moment. tying the yellow ribbon when the hostages are there. we're not in that moment. >> that's the thing, chuck. it's a moment in a game. it is the beginning of the game. it is the seventh inning in baseball. those moments, they're nice, but they now seem to consume the sport. and that's what i think the owners and the management of these teams have to get away from. this is not a playground for you to express your political ideolo ideology, day in and day out, game after game. you're there to play the game.

and you take that moment, to your point, ruth, you can either go on the field and stand or stay in the locker room. >> but you can't protest. >> can i just say, though -- >> how is that american? >> the one league that's struggling with this is the nfl, whose ownership demographic is closer to trump than any other sports. >> that's it. >> not baseball, not basketball -- >> certainly not basketball. >> you can't tell me that isn't a part of this, ruth. >> i don't. >> that if it weren't -- if it weren't for the ownership demographic, we wouldn't be having -- that the nfl would have ignored trump. >> yes. but, you know, but trump went on his rampage against the nfl and trump argued, don't know w, i guess we're back to james clapper territory about what the impact is, that his rampage and the nfl players' behavior was responsible for lower ratings. who knows? but they clearly were responsive to him. >> look, on the culture wars,

trump's people follow trump's lead. they watch "roseanne," because roseanne is pro-trump. >> hey, i watch "roseanne". >> but they got that extra boost. >> in some ways, this is good for the nfl because we're not talking about concussions. >> you're right. they have an existential threat to their game that's much bigger. >> players are wrecking their brains to play the game. and when you think about that, you can't enjoy the game. >> ruth, charlie michael, thank you very much. up ahead, president trump versus the teleprompter. sfx: muffled whistle text alert.

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well, in case you missed it, nobody puts words in president trump's mouth. >> i don't get up here with teleprompters. i don't have teleprompters, folks. these stupid teleprompters. teleprompters. teleprompters. teleprompters. and i definitely don't read the speeches. >> except when he does. >> so your vote in 2018 is every bit as your vote in 2016. although i'm not sure i really believe that, but you know. i don't know who the hell wrote

that line. i'm not sure! >> ah, the beloved teleprompter. it's always there when politicians need it. it's on the left, it's on the right, always just out of frame. like most live television shows, we have one of them things here at "mtp daily." allowing me to read our writers' outstanding copy while staring directly into your soul. but a warning, mr. president, the teleprompter can be fickle. don't believe me? ask my colleague, ron burgundy. >> well, that's going to do for all of us here at channel 4 news. you stay classy, san diego. i'm ron burgundy? >> dammit, who typed a question mark on the teleprompter. >> all right, so we did the clean version. you have to read what you're about to read before you actually read it. because you never me what's going to pop up on that screen as it scrolls by. you can't just trust it! of course you can trust it. just keep reading, chuck.

wait! who put that in there. no, i will not just keep reading. i will not just mindlessly read whatever appears on some piece of glass -- stop it -- get out of my head! mr. president, i implore was, say what you mean and mean what you say. use your words. don't let your words use you. here's my favorite part of the president's reaction, though, to that. finally, a politician being honest that maybe, just maybe, their own election was the most important election to them and not the next election. in that sense, thank you, president trump, for actually being one of the few politicians to be honest about what's the most important election and whether your vote is as important this time as it was the last time. that's all for tonight. we'll be back tomorrow with more "mtp daily." "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. >> i see you out there with the

anchorman reference, and i have to say, milk was a bad choice. >> you stay classy, ari melber. >> you too, chuck todd giving us some food for thought with the teleprompter. we begin "the beat" now with some breaking news. bob mueller is now circling the people closest to trump including the family. his son-in-law and adviser jared kushner sat with mueller's team for a second time. here's the news on that. this interview, we're told, lasted over six hours. kushner's lawyer is speaking out about it tonight, which in itself is important. he's telling msnbc the client answered every question, on the campaign, on the transition, including russia and sanctions questions, and we know there are questions about the activities post-inauguration, including something at the beating heart of the obstruction query. how and why was james comey fired? kushner a key figure, a lawyer in his own right, someone who was with trump from the start, and has been involved