border. president trump blames democrats. >> they don't care about the children. they don't care about the injury. they don't care about the problem. they don't care about anything. >> blames mexico. >> they can stop the immigration on the spot, but they choose not to do it. >> blames the media. >> they are helping these smugglers and these traffickers like nobody would believe. >> in the end, the president moves to stop separating children from their parents. >> we are signing an executive order. >> but then says fellow republicans should stop wasting their time on immigration until after the election.

so what is the administration's plan to house the children or to reunite the families? my guest this morning republican senator james langford of oklahoma and independent senator angus king of maine who caucuses with the democrats. also, refugee crisis. why are so many people from central america coming to the united states? what are they fleeing? richard engel of nbc news has a report from his trip to el salvador. >> and political culture wars. white house press secretary sarah sanders is asked to leave a restaurant because she works for president trump. her father, mike huckabee tweets this picture with the caption, nancy pelosi introduces her campaign committee. is all of this the new normal? joining me for insight and analysis are nbc news capital news correspondent kasie hunt, and erick erickson editor of the resurgent. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press". >> the longest-running show in television history, this is "meet the press" with chuck

todd. good sunday morning. for perhaps the first time in his presidency donald trump lost an issue that was defined by television. not the facts that parents and children were separated at the border, that was the administration's policy, what mattered was what happened next. it was the wall to wall parade of desperate parents and the first ladies and the growing number of republicans, and it was the sound of administration officials articulating a policy from separating children from their parents and then denying that their policy was to separate children from their parents. in the end, president trump did agree to do what he insisted could not be done. he signed an executive order ending the policy. there are reports of tense infighting at the white house over how to reunite families and confusion about where to house tens of thousands of people. to be fair, this crisis, immigration crisis which more properly should be called a refugee crisis has confounded presidents beforehand, with

children at shelters at the border, this much is clear. the trump administration has inflamed a humanitarian crisis and it has no idea yet how to repair. >> people walk in, they put a foot in. please, would you like to register? other countries they say get the hell out of here. >> president trump is on defense. after first denying the administration could even end the administration's policy. >> congress and the courts created this problem and congress can fix it. >> there is only one body that created this legislation and it's congress. >> you can't have an executive order. >> mr. trump signed an executive order he now says would end it. so we're keeping families together and this will solve that problem. >> but the reality is more complicated. in 1997 flores settlement the government cannot detain children with their parents for

20 days, likely not enough time for adults to get a court hearing and out of 2300 children the government has confirmed were separated from their parents since may 5th, so far the administration says only 522 children have been reunited with their families. >> what happens to the kids now that they've been separated from their parents? why did you guys sign it yesterday? >> children are scattered across the country, housed in about 100 shelters in 17 states and despite repeated requests, the department of health and human services has not allowed cameras inside forcing on government to rely on government handout images and in the midst of this crisis the white house declined to hold a briefing to answer questions for the public for four straight days. >> in this audio released by a civil rights attorney, a 6-year-old jimena from el salvador begs to talk to her aunt. jimena is lucky because she was

able to memorize her aunt's phone number. she connected with her this week on the phone. [ speaking foreign language ] >> many of those charged with the illegal entry into the united states say they have only been given a flyer on how to locate their child. >> the children don't have the capacity to even maybe tell them their parents' full name. so being able to identify the parents through the children is something that's impossible. >> despite the bureaucratic confusion and questions of pure competence, the president has been pretty clear about one thing, the message he wants to send. >> but if we did that everybody come -- if we did that, you would have -- you're right. the word is overrun. we would have millions and millions of people pouring

through our country. >> joining me now is republican senator james langford of oklahoma. he's been taking the lead on finding the short-term congressional fix to the family separation issue. senator langford, welcome back to "meet the press" sir. >> thank you. good to be back with you. >> let me start with the basic question. have we misnamed this? is this a refugee crisis than an immigration crisis considering this is a specific region of the world where this is emanating from? >> this has been a long-term issue. i'm not sure i'd call it a refugee crisis, about you it's been destabilizing for a long time. there was $650 million into el salvador, honduras and they'll provide some stabilizing force in their government and to be able to provide them a reason to be able to stay. i've been in the region multiple times, to be able to oversee how that money is being spent, but this is a long-term issue. you go back to 2013 there were families coming as a family unit and now we're up to 89,000

families a year that are coming at the united states as a family unit. >> let's go to some specifics here because we haven't gotten a lot of answers from the trump administration, maybe you have gotten some of these answers. maybe they're fulfilling their duty to at least let you know what's going on in congress. do you know how many of these kids that have been separated -- how many of them are in shelters? how many of them are at detention facilities and how many of them are in foster care. do you know how many are a good idea with the categories. >> we know where every single child is. this is an issue that's gone out there in some of the other media and it's not been responsible with this with the assumption that the administration's lost track of that. so let me clarify a couple of things. these are career professionals that work with hhs and that work with dhs and customs and border patrol and i.c.e. these are not political appointees and they are career

folks and they know where every child is to connect them with their relative. trying to be able to make sure we're connect the dots on this. of the 12,000 children 10,000 of those are unaccompanied minors. >> right. >> that came with no parent at all and then you've got another 2,000 that are out there that came with a family member of some type. they're all in hhs custody and they're trying to be able to reconnect them now, but hhs often puts them in foster care across several states because they can't handle the load on the southern border. >> to be clear, while you said we know where every child is that the government knows where every child is. the government of the 2300 that were separated from their parents, that the government has said the number might be higher, we don't know, but of the 2300 they've confirmed do we know where those parents are? that's an unknown, correct? we don't know where the parents are. >> well, it's a known of the

adult they came with so the child and adult they came with, we don't know if that is the parent. oftentimes the parent that is somewhere in the country oftentimes illegally, as well. they came with another relative and so to be able to connect the dots to see if we connect them with their parent that's here in the country and connect them going through procedures and whatever that may be and yes, we are able to connect them as well. >> the child, you identify the parent and the child, then what happens? is the parent brought to where the child is? are they sent to a separate facility? what can you tell us about that situation? >> it's a mixture. we are trying to work through the process to connect through the adult and some of the adults are given an ankle monitoring system and an ankle bracelet and they get a notice to appear

hearing and as you put in your lead-in which was very well done. the flores settlement from 1997 says that you can only hold that job for 20 days and it takes about 35 days to get a hearing. what the court set up in 1997 was this conundrum. you have to either release them as they come as a family when they come into the country and hope they show up. to be very clear, only 2% of the family units that come to the united states illegally actually go through and actually had the notice to appear, finished up with the notice of removal and actually leave the country. so the family units that are coming here. 98% of them end up somewhere in the country, most of them illegally because they never actually leave after they're given the responsibility for an order of removal. >> your congressional fix here and let's get to the 20-day conundrum. the trump administration's asking for relief from the courts. they're probably not going to get it because the obama administration asked for the very same relief.

they didn't get it either. you want to defund it. how is that going to make the matter easier to deal with? if you don't fund the flores settlement essentially, not allow any money to go to it, how is that going to help the situation? i'm a bit confused. >> so let me give you three different options. one is to say we don't fund it, push it back to the court and say we don't give the executive branch the ability to be able to operate this, and we want to go to the court and be able to resolve it. the next is to change the dates on it. to say it's not 20 days or maybe 60 days to gives enough time to get through a hearing and so we keep families together the entire time to be able to do that. we've got to add additional judges which we've asked for 225 additional judges across the country to be added for immigration and ultimately we've got to deal with flores as a whole. the lowest level i'm trying to find the lowest common denominator so we can make sure we function together. the best thing to do is to reform it so that we actually keep families together and keep them there long enough that we can get through a proper

hearing. >> are you in favor of using military bases to house these families? it appears dhs has made a request to the defense department. is that something you think is a good idea. >> >> president obama used basis for the minors and some were in my home state in oklahoma which by the way, members of congress from my state tried to visit those facilities that are in my state where president obama was holding the unaccompanied minors and they were turned away at the door and told they were not allowed in. this is something new the trump administration is doing blocking people out. no, it's the exact same policy hhs had before. we made an appointment and after we made an appointment we were able to go through the process. >> should that be the process or should there be more transparency? do you think the white house has been fully transparent with the american public about what they're trying to do here? >> i don't, actually. this has been one of the great frustrations. the white house has not been clear on how bad the flores settlement is. they tried to say it, say it and say it. you shouldn't allow just anyone

to view a spot with children. this has been policy, if you're coming to the location where there's children, we need to know who you are and we have to know background and we can't trust that you have an i.d. and if you do that you can get in as a member of congress just like president obama had the children at a military base as well. >> my final question is whether the president is creating more problems or making it harder to solve by the rhetoric he's using. this is how he's described people coming across the border just this week, senator. take a listen. >> they could be murderers and thieves. >> they endanger all of our children. >> millions of people flowing up and just overtaking the country. >> they're human traffickers, they're coyotes. we're getting some real beauties.

>> we want people in our country based on merit. not based on a draw where other countries put their absolute worse in a bin and they start drawing people. >> do you believe that rhetoric demonizes immigrants and makes your job harder? >> it does, actually, but the challenge of it is there is a percentage where the president is absolutely correct on that. >> what's the percentage? the percentage is pretty small. >> it is. it is pretty small. >> to do two for two -- go ahead, sorry. >> i would prefer the president would say the folks are coming for check reasons they want to be flee into an area where they have greater economic opportunities. every family wants to be able to see that for their family, but there are also some individuals that are there. on average, every day dhs stops or interdicts ten people that are on the terror watch list trying to come into the country. so i have a real concern that we're demonizing law enforcement folks that really are trying to be able to do their job because there are very real threats, but the vast majority of individuals are coming for economic reasons and they're coming from central america and they're not fleeing to costa rica, belize or ecuador

who have great asylum laws. they're coming to the united states because they want the economic opportunities and not just asylum and they're trying to come for economic gains and i don't blame them for that, but to tell you the truth, 1.1 million people a year become citizens legally and this can be done legally, but the challenge is for those individuals that's a much smaller number that are doing it illegally, how do you process that? >> senator langford, i'm going to leave it there. thank you for coming on and sharing your views. much appreciate it. >> thank you. joining me from brunswick, maine, is independent. i want a perspective from the other side of the aisle. >> good to be with you, chuck. >> are we misnamed this? is this a refugee crisis more than it is a migrant or immigration crisis? >> think it is. i think that's exactly right. it's more of an asylum and refugee. it's important to make distinctions. these are almost entirely people

coming from central america and not mexico, particularly honduras, el salvador and guatemala, and they're fleeing violence and that's one of the reasons that this deterrent may not work, if you're looking down the barrel of a gun in your home community, whatever your chances are to get to a free country, you're going to take it in order to save your family's life. so if that really is what we're talking about here and this is different from, very different from the waves of illegal immigrants coming across the border 15, 20 years ago, mostly from mexico, simply looking for jobs. mexican migration has diminished enormously. >> if it is -- if you believe it should be treated more as a refugee crisis. for instance, how we handled the cubans in the '50s and the '60s and vietnamese in the '70s. how has the approximately see changed -- does the government intervention, should it be different if it's a refugee crisis? well, yeah, because if you're

crossing the border illegally with no claim of asylum or refugee status, then that's a crime and we have a process for deportation. people have -- people coming to claim asylum are not illegal immigrants and under the law they have a right to establish their claim of asylum that are in legitimate fear for their life and they're fleeing persecution in their country and that applies to people from other parts of the world, but you have that right and the problem is james langford mentioned this. we don't have enough judges and there's a bureaucratic backlog to get adjudicated. what do you do with the people in the interim and the administration made a terrible choice of separating children from their parents and now they're saying well, we'll keep them together and we'll keep them together in detention. i don't think that's a necessary choice either. there's a lot of data that there are alternatives to detention that can still ensure that people show up for their court

hearing which by the way are a lot cheaper for the taxpayers. >> very quickly on this senator langford, he's leaving to fix the flores amendment and you heard a lot of ways to do that, defund it completely and make it something and the administration can't do it and extend it to 60 days rather than 20 days. what do you favor and i know a bill with senator feinstein, but there's no republican support, and i assume it's a bipartisan deal. are there things that you can support? >> well, there are a number of proposals kicking around and i was in a meeting in susan collins' office and it was very interesting sitting next to dianne feinstein and ted cruz. ted cruz and dianne both have a bill. the opportunity to vote for a

feinstein/cruz bill. they're talking about not separating and talking about some alternatives and this is where the discussion is, does it have to be detention? i don't like the defunding idea and that's essentially saying, you know, the courts, we're not going to listen to you. i don't think that makes sense, but i think some additional time may be true, but i want to talk about how do we deal with these people? the other thing, chuck, we've got to talk about is what's going on in these countries and why is this surge coming toward us. >> right. >> in fact, before the program this morning james and i were talking about going to central america. he's been there a couple of times. >> right. >> and trying to figure out what can we do to stabilize those regimes so people don't feel they have to run for their lives to america. >> i'm curious, considering what

happened in 2014 when the obama administration was tackling essentially the same surge of folks coming from central america. the obama administration didn't exactly welcome those folks with open arms either. the goal was, while they didn't separate, the goal was to get them back to the home country as quickly as possible. was that a mistake in hindsight? >> i think they were overwhelmed. if you go back and read about that period, and i went with a couple of other senators to mcallen, texas, during that period to see how these kids were being treated. the difference between then and now, three years ago they were unaccompanied kids. what's happened this time is kids are coming with their families, with their parents and they're being separated and that's what i think caused this firestorm, but there clearly has to be a better way to deal with this, and i think there are alternatives to detention, more judges and more timely processing of these things because we're a nation of immigrants, number one, except for the african-americans who were brought here, against their will and the native american, but all the rest of us are immigrants and also asylum seekers. the pilgrims were escaping religious persecution. >> right. >> andrew sullivan argues this

week, just give trump his wall. he used more colorful language than that and go get something for it if you're the democrats. give him his wall because maybe there will be more heart in the rest of these policies and the rest of this migrant crisis. are you there yet? give the president has wall and figure this out? >> ironically, chuck, we did that. mike grounds and i had an amendment and it was the one that got the most votes on the floor of the senate. we got 54 votes. it was in a sense daca for the wall, and the wall was fully funded. the democratic caucus voted, i think, 46 out of 48 member, and 49 members for it. that was a hard sell, but the white house itself torpedoed the bill. they threatened to veto and they sent out a scurrilous press release from dhs and we had the votes. we had probably 65, 67 votes. they killed it. they had the wall in their hand and they let it go because they wanted more and the question is they keep sort of raising the ante and saying you have to

limit legal immigration. you've got to change this. you've got to change that and that's one of the problems is we never know what the goal line is. >> want to show you a movement growing on the democratic side of the aisle and a hash tag, abolish i.c.e. referring to the enforcement agency when it comes to immigration. listen to kamala harris said about the idea of abolishing i.c.e. >> i think there's no question that we have to critically re-examine i.c.e. and its role and the way it is being administered and we probably need to think about starting from scratch. >> what do you make of that? is i.c.e. the bigger problem here? >> i don't -- i don't know how you abolish an agency without abolishing the function and i think the function is necessary. as far as what she said about examining what they're doing, that's absolutely what we should do and it's our responsibility to provide oversight and ultimately there would have to be an agency.

before i.c.e. there was ins and there was a way to enforce the immigration laws in the country, but taking a look at how they're doing it and how they're approaching it. the question we had -- we had a border patrol stop up here in maine a couple of weeks ago. is that constitutional? do we stop american citizens in the middle of a highway and ask for their papers? there are a lot of questions to be answered. i don't know if i say abolish. i don't think that makes a lot of sense, but i do think looking at it makes a hell of a lot of sense. >> senator angus king, independent senator from maine, thanks for coming on and sharing your views, sir. >> thanks, chuck. when we come back, more on what's behind the border crisis. you heard both senators refer to the issue in central america. nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel is back from el salvador, one of the countries where life is so

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welcome back. as i mentioned earlier, what we are seeing on the border is really a bit of a refugee crisis more than an immigration crisis. people from central america, places like guatemala, honduras and el salvador are coming here to find work in the united states than to escape the life at home. gang violence is so prevalence in honduras and el salvador that according to the united nations, those two countries have the highest homicide rates in the world. highest homicide rates in the world and you wonder why people are fleeing.

richard engel returned last night from a trip to el salvador where he reported why people are willing to risk this dangerous journey and family separation to come to the united states and richard joins me now from seaside, california, where we made him stop here to get on our show. richard, thanks very much. let me start with this. normally i'm talking to you and you're in a war zone somewhere, maybe you're in syria, maybe you're in north africa or maybe somewhere in asia, but here you are in central america. does it feel like the war zones you cover when you cover the war? >> reporter: it felt very much like a war zone, a low-grade war zone and there were places in el salvador where you can't go, and where the police and government don't feel safe to go. we're talking about a population of 100,000 active gang members and when you have that many people with guns and when you have a government that doesn't feel in control of the capital city, then you're having a war zone dynamic. people we talked to said they're afraid to go out in the

countryside. when they do they see gang members carrying their weapons openly. there are gang checkpoints stopping you, asking you where you're from and what affiliation you have and if they don't like your answers they will kill you and drop you in the street. we went to a prison and met very hard-core gang members and one of them bragged to us that he'd killed 35 people just himself and when you have that number of dangerous people who feel that emboldened it is not surprising that people want to leave the country and seek different opportunities and don't want their children to get sucked into the gang life and have them become the next generation of killers or victims. >> in some ways you've spent way too much time in syria for us at nbc. compare the story in el salvador. how much of that country are they actually governing and how much of it are the gangs in charge of this. is it like syria where you had

parts of the country governed by certain entities? >> reporter: well, not just the 100,000 people or so who are active gang members, there are some estimates that you have to multiply that number by five or ten to get the real number of people who are actually affiliated with gangs, supported with gangs, make their lively hood with gangs and this is a small country, el salvador. we're only talking 6.5 million people. that is roughly one in ten people there is either a gang member or makes their livelihood from a gang member. we're talking about 10% of the population, just of the population living outside the law, and this is a population that is armed. so they are able to control and exert their will over a lot more of the percentage than that. so there are large parts of the country that are not fully under the government's control. >> i'm curious, you spent a lot of times on the front lines covering the migrant crisis into southern europe. give me some similarities,

differences between what you witnessed with this migrant crisis coming up from central america. >> so you were talking to a lot of your guests earlier. is this a refugee crisis from central america or a migrant crisis? usually they're always mixed together. you have people fleeing from war zones and people actively afraid for their lives and want more economic opportunities. but what i haven't seen before is this family separation. as i was there in central america, watching the people try to leave, watching them be deported back home i remembered covering this massive migration crisis that was in europe a few years ago, and we saw lots and lots of refugees and lots and lots of migrants, but we didn't see authorities deliberately separating people from families. they didn't see it as necessary and productive. i was in hun garry and hungary has most aggressive, hardline,

anti-immigration crisis and people are coming into hungary, and i remember one image seared in my brain, they were on the bus and people on the bus started becoming hysterical. they were shouting and under guard and very agitated. what happened is one of the family members on the bus had gotten separated from their child so everybody on the bus started to scream. the bus stopped. they opened the windows and people on the ground lowered -- raised the child, raised the baby on to the bus so the family could stay together and the family drove off, the bus drove off. even in hungary that has one of the most anti-immigration policy in the world right now, they were stopping the busses and making sure the people could be reunited with their families because they didn't want to inflict any more trauma on to the people, so they could control the situation and not cause unnecessary agitation and stress.

>> richard engel, you've seen quite a bit of this in your travels around the world, richard. thanks for your reporting. much appreciated. before we go to break, a quick programming note. jacob soboroff, tonight he'll be reporting on the crisis on dateline sunday called "the dividing line" it airs at 7:00, 6:00 central. we'll be right back with the panel and donald trump's first very real re-tweet as president. (vo) new purely fancy feast filets. like nothing you, or she, has ever seen. filets of 100% real natural chicken or seafood. handcrafted, and served any way she wants.

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back now with the panel. stephen hayes, editor in chief of the weekly standard. heather mcgee, nbc news capitol hill, kasie hunt and erick eriksson. >> steve hayes, president trump had his first retreat and you could argue the first guardrail that the republican party signed on to to erect him and reverse himself. what does that mean? >> it was the public pressure. the president didn't do this easily and this is an ad hoc president leaving his staff and congressional republicans to scramble in his wake and try to make things right. if you think about the white house line on this, the line that the president's supporters took. they went from separating families was the right thing to do, to the separating families were terrible, but democrats made us do it, it's awful and only congress can fix it to the president's executive order has solved the problem and obviously there's inconsistency there. you're seeing the president scramble and he doesn't know what he thinks and this is a president with a variety of positions on this broad,

immigration issue. remember he in 2012 criticized mitt romney for his self-deportation plan as maniacal, crazy and mean spirited and he's pushing a plan that i think we'd all agree is more aggressive than mitt romney's. >> heather? >> i think this is what the president of the united states' ace in the hole. he was very clear. my people love the family separation thing. you would think the president saying my people would mean all of us, but no. he's weaned on these negative images as immigrants of all kinds as criminals and gang members and he doubled down by saying holding that press conference by saying we have an epidemic of people being killed by undocumented immigrants when we know that immigrants, whether they're undocumented or not commit crimes at lower rates than native-born americans. this is a political strategy to divide americans to make us feel like there's a sense of panic and fear and actually think any time we use the word crisis to

talk about border crossings that are at a 40-year low, we're actually feeding into that. frankly, there are things he's doing to the economy, threats to health care, tax handout to the very wealthy that are things that he wants to distract from and that's what's happening here. >> he made the case, it's good for me and good for the party and i thought i understand why he thinks it's good for him. it's been good for his political career. what do you make of his claim that it's good for the party for the midterms? >> this is the first time that i can remember some of his evangelical leaders speaking up and criticizing him which is significant when you've had evangelicals who stood up with him through everything and criticizing him and having to walk back and having the president who is the best negotiator, walking this back himself and i don't think this is good for the party. he thinks there are 2 billion news cycles between now and november. this isn't going to anchor the party. >> kasie, this is the first time that i thought a subject that i think about this sunday is now the same subject, that i'm

questioning this sunday. that is a rare occasion and i think it tells you the potency of the issue. >> i'm with you, chuck and i remember thinking the same thing last sunday as we were heading into the news week. you wonder is this the story that will be different and will carry through? you're absolutely right that this one did, and i also think it's the first time and erick mentioned the evangelical leaders and it's the first time congressional republicans looked at something the president did and said no way. how many times have we asked ourselves, charlottesville, the muslim ban, when will republican leaders stand up to the president? and the answer is when we saw the awful images of children being separated and there was not a person that i could find saying this is what we should be doing. no, yes, we have problems at the border and there were disagreements among republicans about thou to handle asylum claims and should we build the wall, but to a person, no one wanted to defend this? >> what's the bigger threat? how he's handling the issue of immigration or how he handles the cleanup of this.

i want to bring up people who said this is his, quote, katrina. i want to put up a quote and george w. bush wrote about katrina. just as katrina was more than a hurricane, this is what president bush wrote, its impact was more than physical destruction, and it cast a cloud over my second term. it is possible, heather and steve that how they reunify or don't reunify becomes a competency issue and not a partisan issue. >> i would say maria has been president trump's katrina and i think this is another similar issue where there's just this callousness and particularly to the latino community in this

country and in this part of the world, that shows that they really don't care and when a government doesn't care, you begin to erode the trust, and i think part of what's happened here is that we now have even with the executive order. we now have in every single state hundreds of thousands of people pledging to go to the border, to go to their state capitals on june 30th to rally. this has become a cultural flash point. >> i would just add to that, the main difference what you said about president trump is that president trump wants to exacerbate these decisions. president trump lamented those -- it regretted what it did. president trump wants to do this, but look, so do the democrats. it was a thoughtful, substantive conversation. >> by the way, they are in the 40-yard line of american politics. >> and the politics here, i think, one of the reasons you don't have solutions to the broader immigration problem is because it works politically for both parties and extremes of both parties. kamala harris talking about abolishing i.c.e., that's the

solution where we'll abolish the bureaucracy? >> this is an agency, that's not the point. >> the point is, she's offering an extreme solution that doesn't actually solve any problem because somebody -- >> to build on heather's point here and i want to get casey in here, is this in the way that conserves will say abolish the irs which is sort of a ridiculous proposition and is this going to become that abolish the irs chant? >> i think it's becoming a litmus test for this issue in potentially a 2020 primary situation and if you think about kamala harris in particular, she has been very consistent, quite frankly, if you're an activist on immigration, she is one of your people. she took a vote in the senate and one of only three democrats that bucked the county on a compromise.

she is to the -- i don't quite want to describe this as to the left. >> of the mainstream presidential on this issue. she is setting the bar for where that is and people, frankly, are responding and the event we went to cover and she went to visit a detention center where mothers were separated and they didn't organize a rally, but there were hundreds of people that showed up on the street and some with organizations and the aclu and others and they came to see her. >> it will be a fascinating debate if that percolates. you have angus king there and you will have the debate about i.c.e. in these primaries and let me take a quick break. when we come back, we'll change gears a bit and president trump said it's easy to win a trade war and there are losers in the united states and guess who most of them voted for? before we go to break, a word about someone we lost this week and charles krauthammer began a career as a psychologist and became political reknowned, and a diving accident at the age of 22 left him a quadriplegic. krauthammer was a neoconservative. in his tv appearances, he was tough and rigorous and never disagreeable.

he appeared on "meet the press" six times and most recently he was on fox news the morning of election day with quite the far-sighted prediction of what a trump presidency might mean. >> the first thing he will do is he will irreversibly re-shape the party. this was the party of reagan, and the bush years were sort of an echo of the reagan years. reagan defined the contours of the party. trump will do that and it will be changed, particularly the most obvious issues are going to be immigration and trade. this will be a -- it will be a populist party. >> talk about being prescient. charles krauthammer was 68. possibilities than ever before. and american express has your back every step of the way- whether it's the comfort of knowing help is just a call away with global assist. or getting financing to fund your business.

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♪ ♪ welcome ♪ ♪ welcome back. "data download" time, the escalating trade war president trump has started between the united states and, well, everybody, hasn't had a direct impact on the lives of most americans yet, but the one place where people are starting to already feel the pain, the agricultural midwest. farmers who grow crops like wheat and corn or who produce pork and guess what? they're getting hit hard and when the u.s. hit china with tariffs china knew exactly where to hit back, for instance, soybeans. china is the number one soybean importer in the world and they announced retaliatory tariffs on u.s. soybeans in april. previously china got 40% of its soy from the united states. in 2014, 57% of all soybean exports went to china. so what's happened? soybean prices have already fallen 15% since china announced the tariff more than a two-year

low, and in iowa, for example, the des moines register estimates the new tariffs could cost soybean farmers in the state, and the political consequences could be significant for the president's part especially going into the mid-terms this november. these are the top ten soy-producing states in the united states. eight of them voted for donald trump in 2016 and guess what? he came really close and won more, minnesota. a whopping 95%. the repercussions of president trump's trade policies are hurting the very people who supported him the most. the top soybean states all have either a governor's race, senate race or both this year. minnesota has two senate seats up. these red or trending red places could very well turn back into toss-ups or even go blue after november. of course, there are lots of reasons folks in these states support donald trump, and some like the tough talk, it has a lot of front, steel, aluminum and cars are on the horizon. when we're seeing now in the midwest may only be the beginning. when we come back, endgame and

how our political culture wars, whatever you want to call them these days just got a lot nastier. ♪ ♪ back now with "endgame." all right, we had a couple of interesting former republicans, i guess, calling for democrats to take control of house. michael bloomberg, he's going to support flipping the house. he says republicans in congress have had almost two years to prove they can govern responsibly and they failed and it's critical we elect people who lead in ways this congress don't. i forgot. chevy also won a j.d. power dependability award for its light-duty truck the chevy silverado. oh, and since the chevy equinox and traverse also won chevy is the only brand to earn the j.d. power dependability award across cars, trucks and suvs-three years in a row. phew. third time's the charm...

that's confident. but it's not kayak confident. kayak searches hundreds of travel and airline sites to find the best flight for me. so i'm more than confident. how's your family? kayak. search one and done. who's already won three cars, two motorcycles, a boat, and an r.v. i would not want to pay that insurance bill. [ ding ] -oh, i have progressive, so i just bundled everything with my home insurance. saved me a ton of money. -love you, gary! -you don't have to buzz in. it's not a question, gary. on march 1, 1810 -- [ ding ] -frédéric chopin. -collapsing in 226 -- [ ding ] -the colossus of rhodes. -[ sighs ] louise dustmann -- [ ding ] -brahms' "lullaby," or "wiegenlied." -when will it end? [ ding ] -not today, ron.

♪ back now with "endgame." al back now with "end game." all right. we had a couple of interesting former republicans, i guess, calling for democrats to take control of house. first you had michael bloomberg. he's going to support flipping the house. he says republicans in congress have had two years they could govern responsibly. they failed. as we approach the 2018 mid terms it is critical wee elect people would can lead in ways this congress won't. you can argue whether bloomberg was a republican before, switched to democrat. i'll take your point. how about george will? the republican caucus must be substantially reduced so substantially their remnants reduced to minorities will be stripped of the article 1 constitutional powers. a legislature whose unexercised muscles have atrophied because of people like them. mr. eriksson, what do you make of this?

>> i disagree with my friend george will. i agree congress has let their muscles atrophy in legtsing congress. it is a class of pundits as opposed to a class of legislators. it is a real problem on both sides of the aisle where both sides want the issue to campaign on. i do think there is a danger for democrats, though, in that typically in the midterms you depend on an incumbent party that doesn't turnout. and the progressive culture war, the immigration issues and whatnot, are firing up the republican base. >> kasie? >> you know, one risk here that i do think -- when i read george will's comment about difficuming these majorities, congress doesn't realize if they get really close that they don't actually -- if democrats don't actually win the house, you're going to be left with the narrow est of republican majorities and that's going to hand all of the power to the far-right of the conference. so, if republicans, if never trump republicans want democrats to win the house, they better get their acts together and work

as hard as they can otherwise the consequence are going to be worse. >> embrace your new progressive friend george will. >> you know, listen, i have been asking for republicans to put country over party since, since trump walked down those stairs. so i absolutely believe that this is the beginning of the change and rebirth of the republican party which is going to be necessary. it's too far to the fringe. we have the fringe in the white house and this country is not going to be able to be a bipartisan country in the republicans continue to have this identity. eight steve, i would say you're in the middle of this fight inside the movement. i won't call it your party, but the conservative movement right. one wing versus this trump wing. >> it's not my party. there is no question that what you're seeing is an ideological scramble. george will is making a long-term argument. most members of congress is living the short term. that's the big challenge. >> very diplomatic, by the way. >> the culture wars reared their

ugly head this weekend. we had sarah sanders get kicked out of a restaurant by the owner because she worked for president trump. you had mike huckabee use pretty disgusting sort of tweet, picture here to describe nancy pelosi and her campaign committee using gang members on that. eric eriksson, you were critical of -- >> all of it. >> of all of it. and interestingly, you were almost apologetic. your younger self might have participated in some of this. >> yeah. >> is this the new normal? is this going to get even ugly er? >> i think it is going to get uglier. james hodge kin is more of an anomaly than inflection point. if both sides don't rein it in, no, you started it, this happened, this happened. i had trump supporters show up on my front porch to threaten my family. you have the secretary of homeland security progressive activists show up at her house to protest her. you have people getting thrown

out of restaurants. if we can't agree to disagree and let each other be and nielgter side wants to do that, it becomes a problem. we have -- as religion in the country fades and society becomes more secular, people are finding their salvation in their morals and politics and that's a bad thing. >> i actually think there is a big difference between one of the most powerful people in the world, sarah sandehuckabee sand using her government platform to claim victim status. she is distracting from that and the way the policy is victimizing the least powerful people on the planet, refugee children. there is a difference between being discriminated against for who you are and being judged for what you do. and that's what we saw. >> chuck, i think one thing, too, here is people -- the tenor of the debate on whether or not there are people across the other side of the aisle who you might be able to work with has completely fallen apart. i feel like even -- >> you see it a lot on capitol hill. >> you used to be -- there were these great alliances and friendships.

ted kennedy, al warner. people worked together and you saw that reflected in voters as well. voters were willing to consider voting for somebody else. the tribalism of this, i just fail to see if you think that just because you're a member of the other party that there is no circumstance under which you can work with that person -- is scary. >> there is power in persuasion. >> whatever happened to the golden rule, if everybody just did golden rule with the w we might be in a tiny bit better place. that's all for today. thanks for watching. we're going to continue this conversation. for now we'll be back next week because if it's sunday it's "meet the press." ♪ this is a story about mail and packages. and it's also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they're handing us more than mail

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