husband, she'd get a lot more than $50,000. >> was it a call for help? was it a psychological call for help? i don't know the answer to that. was it a desperate act to get attention? i don't know the answer to that. i can tell you, she sure picked a colorful way to do it. >> it's hard to pull off a fake kidnapping, it just is. that's all for now. i'm lester holt. for all of us at nbc news, thanks for watching. /s ♪ 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, critical mass. thought our politics were explosive before? try replacing the swing vote on the supreme court. we'll talk about the wild conjecture and what's actually about to happen. at the same time, democrats take stock after a top member of leadership is upset in new york. rising stars ben jealous and jason candor join me live to talk about what their party should do next. and later i travel to utah

to talk with mitt romney on the campaign trail. he's set to become the republican senator in the age of trump. plus, do not congratulate. russia stuns spain at the world cup. but first the interviews, the lobbying effort and even the ads are underway to replace justice anthony kennedy on the supreme court. the president is back home after spending the weekend at bedminster conferring with white house counsel don mcgahn. a handful of names are floating around from the president's list of 25. democrats are pushing to postpone the confirmation until after the midterms. >> my colleagues on both sides of the aisle know that this vote could be one of the key votes of their entire career. if they vote for somebody who is going to change precedent, it could be a career-ending move. >> you don't need a degree in applied physics to understand the forces that democrats are up against. so for the white house, it's striking the right balance. convince republicans to hang together and change the court for decades to come. >> i think it's going to go very quickly. i think we're going to have a lot of support.

i think we're going to have support from democrats. frankly, i think -- if it's the right person. i'm going to pick the right person. i'm going to pick somebody that's outstanding and everybody >> i'd like to welcome in my outstanding panel, two of the best reporters in the country on the supreme court legal affairs from npr, anyone a totenberg and justice correspondent pete williams. in new york former federal prosecutor georgetown university prosecutor and msnbc legal analyst paul butler. pete and nina, i'd like to start the conversation off with you. as we were going on the air, i thought i should step back and let the two of you tell our viewers what is about to unfold. pete, just to start out, the context of this, everybody has

cast this retirement as one that is unlike any other, at least in the last generation. do you think that is a fair characterization? >> the last 50 years or so, ever since the nixon administration and earl warren stepped off the court and warren berger took his place. i'd say every time i hear a reporter say the trump nominee could change the supreme court, i think what's this could stuff? of course it's going to change the supreme court because anthony kennedy really, after sandra day o'connor stepped down in 2006, he has been the key vote. really, for most of the cases we pay attention to, you can't win without anthony kennedy. if he votes with the liberals, you get a liberal outcome. if he votes with the conservatives, you get a conservative outcome. that vote is about to be replace bid a conservative.

the conservatives will have a solid majority and that's going to make a huge difference. >> nina, let's step back a minute. for those of us who have not watched the court as long as you've had the privilege to, there is some sense of question as to how somebody like anthony kennedy got on the court in the first place. these debates are so polarized now. >> he got on the court actually because president reagan nominated robert bork who was a hard core conservative to the core, and bank of new york was soundly defeated. he then put up another nominee who had to withdraw because it turned out that he had been smoking marijuana. >> you can do that nowadays. >> you can do that nowadays. at the time, though, the reagan administration wouldn't hire anybody in the justice department who had admitted to smoking marijuana and they never asked him that question apparently when he went to work at the reagan justice department. so, he went by the wayside, but stayed a distinguished federal judge. that left -- they really -- they needed to pick somebody and it was, you know, it was time.

and justice kennedy got the nod and he was a pretty conservative guy. and they looked at all of his writings and they were concerned about his -- some footnote that he wrote about respect for privacy, but they decided to overlook it and there were people in the administration later who didn't like the fact that they had overlooked it. i mean, they thought that was a bad thing. >> and just -- i would add two things to that. number one, remember that justice kennedy we talk about today is not the one that came onto the court back in 1988. secondly, you had this sort of more moderate push. once bork got shot down, the next nominee was conservative. >> the democrats controlled the senate. >> it's not like you go from conservative to more moderate. they're all pretty mainstream conservative.

even if something happened to this nominee, whoever it's going to be, it's not like the next one up would be very different. >> to rain on the parade a little -- >> i'm sorry, paul, go ahead. >> i want to rain on the parade regarding justice kennedy swing. he did swing, but mainly to the right, and so he wrote the majority opinion in citizens united, that case that said corporations are like people. he also voted for bush in bush versus gore. so on certain issues like lgbt issues, he got it in the way most conservatives don't. but in other kinds of civil rights issues not so much. >> and the voting rights act, of course. >> voting rights act, exactly. pete, quickly, you have a short list of -- based on your reporting of that kind of list, the 25 that the president had compiled. and to this point about conservative to conservative, one thing that's been raised in my reporting is the idea if they were to select a woman -- the woman on this list, amy conan barrett of indiana -- is that

something where you have a sense that on questions of precedent, questions of roe v. wade she could have an easier time getting through the senate or be somebody who could make them feel better about the issues? >> not necessarily. she had said roe was erroneously decided is the term she used. to be fair, ruth bader ginsburg said the same thing. it came to the court too fast and the court shouldn't have decided it. but nonetheless, remember she just got on the court of appeals by president trump, so she's been there for about a year. she's already survived the senate confirmation. she was a law professor at notre dame. now she's a federal judge. i heard the president say or someone say the president was going to talk to perhaps two women, and for the life of me i'm not sure who the second woman is. >> i'm not either. let me say something about the list of the president's. the list as much as a political document, the people who compiled it didn't think it was

a political document, the folks at the society and heritage foundation. they don't think they're mainstream conservatives. they think they're movement conservatives. those 25 folks are movement conservatives. they're people who have been waiting a long time to look at vast quantities of the law, very, very differently. and the president -- the first list was 12, i think. president was so thrilled that it reassured the evangelicals, got such great press in the conservative press about it, he said let's do it again. and that -- then they added a couple more people. but that's the list. and the list is not what we used to call a mainstream

conservative. it may be some day mainstream, but today, even on this court i would say the people on this list would be on the far-right of the court. >> paul, can i get you to weigh in? it's a good point. this is something that was compiled as president trump was trying to demonstrate his bona fides in the primary. >> it doesn't matter that the president won't ask how they feel about roe v. wade or lgbt rights. he already knows. president trump said something unusually sage and learned on friday. he said, apart from war, this is the most important decision a president makes, and maybe that's why he's outsourced this process to this far-right federalist society. again, i think he thinks that

the gorsuch nomination was one of the highlights of his presidency, so he wants to do it all over again. again, you can't overstate how conservative gorsuch is. he's more conservative than scalia who he replaced. he's about level with justice clarence thomas, one of the most conservative people ever to sit on the supreme court. >> yeah, i actually want to -- forgive me for my control room loop here. i want to read part of this piece -- part of your piece. you say that after 30 years on the court, he believes that once rights are recognized they will not be taken away. that includes the right to abortion that he helped to preserve and rights for gay people he helped to establish, the right to marry and be treated equally. time will tell, but every indication is president trump in a little over a week is someone who does not think those rights are fully protected by the constitution. i think we have the sound. >> one of the concepts that really means a lot in america is you don't overturn precedent unless there is a good reason. and i would tell my pro-life friends, you can be pro life and conservative, but you can also believe in story decisis. roe v. wade has been affirmed many years. i hope the justice that sits on the court, all of them, would listen to the arguments on both sides before they decide it. the story decisis is a well known concept in our law. >> nina, for people who are watching this unfold and who are worried, for whatever reason,

but let's take people who are worried because they believe that they want roe v. wade upheld, what's the real likelihood that this is going to be a major confrontation down the line? are there cases wanting their way through the system now? >> what i always said was it's not going to be overturned as long as kennedy is there. kennedy is gone. i think the odds are not bad that it might be overturned. and what if there is yet another -- i mean, we have two other members of the court, steve briar, 77, ruth ginsburg is 85. i think there are two ways to go here. you can expect that it will be whittled away so that you can have a lot -- make abortion pretty -- just about inaccessible in the 20 or so states that have tried to do that. >> sometimes it already is. >> or it will be overturned

outright. i don't foresee another one of these coalitions coming together that says, look, this has been the law for 50, 40 some odd years and we're going to respect it. that's what story decisis is, respecting precedent. to us, the people who want to overturn it, is like racial segregation. they want to overturn it because it was wrong in their view. >> pete williams, what's your reporting on this and how realistic is it that there are cases that will wind their way through that would ultimately lead to an overturning of roe v. wade? >> there is no shortage of cases in the states that have tried repeat lid to overturn roe. the more recent trend with ken dip on the court has been to say, well, that's a lost cause. so the action has been in the states to, as nina say, restrict access. instructive example. texas passed a law that said a clinic that provides abortion services has to be built to the same standards as an ambulatory care center and the doctors who

perform the abortions have to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. no hospital would give them admitting privileges. it was a sort of, in essence, a ban on abortion. the supreme court shot that down with justice kennedy voting with the liberals. so, without him there it's more likely, as nina said, these restrictions on abortion, age, consent, time of pregnancy when it's available, types of services, restrictions on medication abortions, they're much more likely to be upheld even if roe survives. >> very interesting. much more to come when "kasie d.c." continues. rod rosenstein faces down congress as the mueller probe quietly presses on. plus, demonstrations break out across the country as the immigration debate stalls yet again. and later i'm joined by former communications director anthony scaramucci amid rumors of new white house shake ups. as we go to break, we dug deep into our vaults for a news reel on how we got to this moment for the supreme court. when republicans blocked even a hearing for merit garland.

>> the supreme court, the highest court in all the land, where are the justices now? in their black robes and the -- yes, their appointments last for life. and when one dies or retires, we go helter-skelter, crazier than a soup sandwich. and today our seat sits open on the high court's bench. here's president barack obama pleading to accept his nominee. >> i ask that they confirm merritt garland to the supreme court. >> merritt garland, mr. moderate. democrats say he's an ideal choice, but not so fast. the grand old party has their game faces on and are ready to play hardball. >> it is clear president obama has made his nomination to politicize it for purposes of the election. >> that's right, leadership marks precedent vowing not to

confirm a nominee until the next president is sworn into office. my oh, my, what a time to be alive! honey, this gig-speed internet is ridiculously fast.

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gig to more homes than anyone. not just the joneses'. over here. xfinity. the largest gig-speed network. mr. rosenstein, why are you keeping information from congress? >> sir, i'm not keeping any information from congress. >> the house of representatives is going to say otherwise. >> your use of this technique -- >> mr. rosenstein, did you threaten staffers on the house intelligence committee? media reports indicate you did. >> media reports are mistaken. >> sometimes, but this is what they said. having the nation's number one law enforcement officer threaten to subpoena your cause in e-mails is down right chilling. did you threaten to subpoena their cause in e-mail s? >> no, sir, and there is no way to subpoena phone calls. >> i'm just saying. who are we supposed to believe, staff members who we've worked with, who never misled us, or you guys who we've caught hiding information from us who tell a

witness not to answer our questions? who are we supposed to believe? >> thank you for making it clear it's not personal, mr. jordan. >> i'm saying the department of justice -- >> i'm telling the truth and i'm under oath. >> those are just some of the heated exchanges we saw on thursday as fbi director christopher wray and deputy attorney general rod rosenstein faced off with members of the house judiciary committee. the house also passed a resolution in the middle of that hearing seeking to compel documents from the justice department regarding the russia investigation. joining our conversation former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor joyce vance. joyce, i'll start with you on what we just saw. and i know you were paying attention to it over the course of the week. it was really, i thought, a remarkable display for them to so publicly attack rosenstein. >> it was incredible. this was the deputy attorney general, the number two guy in the justice department, testifying under oath and being accused of lying by a member of congress. while that deputy attorney general is in the middle of supervising the turnover to congress of an unprecedented level of documentation in an ongoing investigation. >> and the president has -- he did an interview with maria bartiromo of facts and talked

about why he -- or how his involvement is coming to be. we'll take a look the about it, and paul butler i'll ask you about t. >> are you going to ask them to get those documents over to congress? >> i may get involved. i've been told by so many people don't get involved. it's not good. and they'll get the documents and it's getting and they're getting them, and they're great people. i didn't like the scene the >> paul butler, what is your take on the president's words? that was in many ways -- i'm not sure i heard him acknowledge the russian's goal was to sow discord. >> i know rod rosenstein, we

started at the justice department as prosecutors. he's normally the textbook example of non-emotive. i've never seen him as angry at the congressional hearing. add to the mix of the reporting that he feels exploited or used by president trump when he wrote that memo, when trump got him to write that memo justifying the firing of james comey, i'm sure trump would love to fire rosenstein right now, but republicans on the hill said that's a line that he shouldn't cross. and so it's rosenstein who gets to make the decisions about what documents are shared with the congress. and again, i think he's going to toe the line and the president has to basically, you know, follow the will of the career public servant which is exactly what he should do. >> pete williams, you have covered the fbi for many years and i feel like i watch you on television all the time and you say, we have no comment because this is an ongoing criminal investigation.

it seems unprecedented to me the number of documents of an ongoing criminal investigation that the fbi is turning over to congress. >> well, it is. and i think to some extent, the former fbi director shares some of the reasons that this is happening. but let's step back and see what's happening. we do have two separate branches of government. when a criminal investigation is going on, it's traditionally been the view of the justice department, no matter whether republican or democrat in the white house, that you don't turn over to congress your investigative materials. you just don't do that. and these members know that. and i think they're trying to get it for two reasons. one is to undercut the credibility of mueller's investigation. but secondly, to try to sort of set-up rod rosenstein for failure.

to get him to say no so that they can cite him for contempt or something. but i do think that james comey bears some of the responsibility for why this is happening because after the clinton e-mail investigation, he gave huge amounts of information to congress. now, granted, the investigation was over, at least they thought it was at that point. but he gave them the fbi interviews, the so-called 302s that joyce and nina know all about, the raw interview -- >> what time frame was this? >> this was shortly after his testimony. >> okay. >> after his july news conference. i think he thought that it would -- members of congress would read this and say, oh, i get it, i see why james comey did what he did. what he did was create 535 g-men that thought they can now get access to these documents. >> as somebody who covers congress every day, that image i find mildly terrifying. >> it should be grossly terrifying. >> g-men, oh, boy. so, trey gowdy has been somebody who has gone back and forth on this, he drew a lot of attention when he defended mueller's investigation. but he had some pretty tough words in this hearing. take a look. >> russia attacked this country. they should be the target, but russia isn't being hurt by this investigation right now. we are. this country is being hurt by

it. we are being divided. we've seen the bias. we've seen the bias. we need to see the evidence. if you have evidence of wrongdoing by any member of the trump campaign, present it to the dam grand jury. if you have evidence that this president acted inappropriately, present it to the american people. whatever you got, finish it the hell up. because this country is being torn apart. >> so, nina, he raises this point in here we need to see the evidence, if you have any evidence of wrongdoing by the trump campaign. it raises the question whether there ultimately will be a potential supreme court case around what comes out of the mueller investigation. and there's also been part of the conversation around the justice if they select somebody, should they have to recuse themselves. >> there very well could be just on the question of whether or

not the president agrees to testify. if he says, no, i'm not going -- to have his deposition taken. if he says no, i'm not going to be interviewed by mueller and then they subpoena him, then -- and then trump lawyers challenge the subpoena, it will go to the supreme court and it will matter what that justice who is sitting where justice kennedy was, what he thinks. at least one of the potential nominees has written that he thinks that the president should be excused from civil suits and from this kind of -- from special prosecutors entirely. >> that's brett kavanagh. >> that's brett kavanagh. i don't know whether he thought that was something that congress should do or that the court should do frankly, but to be fair, this is a -- you know, the position that the president has taken from time to time is -- and this is only a slight exaggeration because he said, i could go out and shoot somebody in the middle of 5th avenue and nobody -- my base wouldn't care. and he apparently thinks, from everything he said, that he ought to control the justice

department and he would not be subject to prosecution. now, that's -- that's a stretch for me and mr. gowdy, with all deference to mr. gowdy, the reason they haven't finished their investigation is this involves a foreign nation and intelligence and not just was somebody taking money from the cookie jar. >> joyce vance -- >> it's pretty complicate and had it takes a little bit of time. it does take time. >> a little bit or a long time. joyce vance, the last word on gowdy and i what we saw here. >> gowdy's questioning of rosenstein is interesting because we know the mueller investigation has already produced indictments. the one of the campaign managers is sitting in prison awaiting trial. as representative gowdy well knows, it is entirely possible mueller has taken more to the grand jury. there are sealed indictments that haven't yet been made public and mueller has, in fact,

already taken the evidence that gowdy is complaining doesn't exist, to a grand jury. one suspects that this russian troll farm indictment that's already public will have an american component, perhaps involving stone or other close advisors of the president in the coming weeks. >> it's going to be a long hot summer in washington starting this weekend. we're all in 90 degree heat. nina, paul, joyce, paul butler, thank you to you. the ink is dry on the executive order and protests break out across the country as the country's immigration policy remains unresolved. we're back after this. this is matt. look at him, the little freak.

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welcome back to "kasie d.c." in just eight days, president trump will announce his pick to replace retiring justice anthony kennedy on the supreme court. right now the president says he is considering about five people to fill that vacant slot, including two women. joining me now, former white house communications director anthony scaramucci. mr. scaramucci, it is good to see you. i have to ask you first about this tmz, i think, caught up with you and asked you about who

the president is going to pick for the supreme court. can you again tell us who you think he's going to choose? and also how do you know? >> well, that's my guess. i mean, that would be my vaguest sports guess. it's only because of the closeness of the family, the fact that mary trump barry is on the third circuit with him. he's a great judge, a very down to earth guy. but then when i said that, i didn't realize that there were going to be two women on the list of finalists. and so that probably alters my view a little bit. i mean, it could be possible that the president will pick one of those two women. so i'm a little less confident than i was when i did the tmz

interview. >> you think there is anyway in the world he deviates from this list of 25? there was some speculation about senator mike lee, or do you think we're definitely going to get somebody on this list he published? >> i can only go by what we discussed during the campaign and what led up to gorsuch. i think he's going to stick to the list. he likes that list. i also feel he made a campaign promise he was going to pick people off the list. he then said after justice gorsuch got on the court he was going to add people to the list, which he did. so i think it would be uncharacteristic of him if he goes off the list. having said that, the people that they are talking about, should there be another retirement, i could see him adding other people to the list, like the ones that have been talked about. >> i want to talk to you, too, a little about trade and tariffs. this, of course, something your business background, you have weighed in and people have noticed.

here's what the had to say about it in his fox interview, and we'll talk about it. >> would it be better to actually have our allies together to go against china instead of pushing back on our allies? >> you tweeted critically of the president's policy on that position saying he needs to, quote, change tactics now. what doesn't the president get about this, in your view? >> this is the thing. when people say i'm tweeting critically, i'm just really offering a bird's eye advice objectively. it's like the same thing with the child separation act. i said that that's a ridiculous policy. it has to be reversed. i think what sometimes happens is you're sitting in an echo chamber, kasie, and everybody wants to reaffirm each other's biases.

>> you called on the president to change tactics now. >> i did. and the called on the president to reverse the child separation policy as well. but the reason i want to change tactics now is i spent a lot of time analyzing the situation and looking at flow of funds data, not only in europe, but here in the united states as well as china. and one of the things the president has done an amazing job of is he's boosted consumer confidence and the tax cut has led to a stimulation of the economy. not just our economy, but the global economy. what you're watching is the rhetoric and the tension and the escalation of the trade rhetoric is causing a loss of confidence that is very, very bad for market psychology. and so i'm just sending up a warning flare to my friend and saying, listen, one way to change tactics here, the europeans and the united states, roughly a billion people, 46% of the world's gdp, both have issues with china. the president could say, listen why don't we address the imbalances that we both have with china first and then we can workout concession was each other. the only thing i disagree with

the president on, i say this with great respect. i want him to win in the worst possible way and i'm loyal to him. >> you have said that. >> you have to understand the history of what happened with us and europe. go back to the marshall plan, go back to the '47-'48 gad agreement. you'll see why these are imbalanced. we were -- i'm sorry? >> the canadians today, i understand the point you're making about europe. >> okay. >> to expand that broadly to canada, the canadians slapped counter tariffs on us, on america today. do you think that the president is damaging the country in creating a trade war with our closest ally across our border? >> i would say not yet, no. i don't think any real damage has happened yet -- >> -- reverse course? >> the market is telling you that. it doesn't matter what you think or i think, kasie.

the market is telling you that. if you look at flow of funds data and you look at the last six months of market activity, the stock market was up roughly 2.5% for the first six months. that's the worst half of a year since 2010 when we've had a very -- great period of robust growth and low monetary policy. so, the market is getting in a defensive position and girding itself. and what i don't like about what's going on is the president set the tempo for american ceos, business leaders large and small. america is open for business, let's invest in the country. let's repatriate capital back from overseas. the trade rhetoric is slowing people down and he's a very, very smart guy. he's an entrepreneur. he adapted on the child separation policy. i figure he can adapt here quickly where we can leave the economy growing and still address the trade issue. i think he's right on the trade issue, but i think he's wrong to go at both sides as aggressively as he's going. now, a lot of people will be

criticizing me for saying that. that's fine. i think it is very, very important that we have smart people sitting in the room and offering different advice, which may or may not be inside the consensus. >> speaking of people sitting inside the room, there's been a lot of chatter. this comes up from time to time, but there seems to be some more concrete details around chief of staff, john kelly potentially leaving. there's rumors, i would say, about sarah huckabee sanders and her tenure in the administration. we're running out of time, but quickly i want to know what you take first of all on the leaks out of the administration, what you make of those. second of all, has anybody been in touch with you about making a return run? >> no, thank god, no one has been in touch with me. but quickly, sarah's great. if general kelly is leaving, i wish him well. and the president will pick somebody hopefully that really likes him so he can start

building a team around him, of people that really like the president as opposed to this establishment nonsense. the president has an agenda -- >> do you think the president has been effective? >> well, listen, you know, i have spoken about it before so i don't want to be the guy that's like beating the tommy-tom drum. do you think he's effective? >> that's a yes or no question. >> kasie, do you think he's been effective? i'll leave you this one last thought. he wasn't capable of bringing one person into the white house. he didn't recruit one person. usually leadership, people want to work for you or work under you. they come running through the door to come work for you. so, listen, him and i don't like each other. it's totally fine. i don't want to make it personal, but just analyze it and be objective about it. and by the way, he only gave me 11 days as a communications director. three or four more days, i would have fired several of those people that are still leaking on the president right now. >> anthony scaramucci, thank you very much. happy holiday to you. >> happy 4th, kasie, happy 4th. >> coming up, a growing number of democrats call to abolishites as the immigration reaches a

tipping point. you're watching "kasie d.c." ahh... summer is coming.

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text summer17 to 500500 to start listening today. over the weekend, demonstrators filled the streets in cities across the country to protest the trump administration's zero-tolerance immigration policy. meanwhile, the department of

homeland security released a scathing internal review which found that i.c.e. failed to adequately monitor hundreds of detention facilities here in the u.s. for years. just last week, i spoke with senator kamala harris about calls to abolish i.c.e. more and more democrats are in favor of getting rid of the agency. >> i think there's no question that we've got to critically reexamine i.c.e. and its role and the way that it is being administered and the work it is doing and we need to probably think about starting from scratch. >> i think it's too aggressive and over the top and i think it's lost its course. so we should replace it with something sensible, something practical. they still have to be a law enforcement agency but one that is a little more humane. >> we should froe text families that need our help and that is not what i.c.e. is doing today. start over, reimagine it, and build something that actually works. >> we can replace it with a humane agency that is directed toward safe passage rather than criminalization. >> we need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom, starting by replacing

i.c.e. with something that reflects our morality and our -- >> joining me now on set, political reporter for axios, alexa mccanaan. chief correspondent for cnbc, john harwood. and contributor raul reyes. raul, i want to start with you. these abolish i.c.e. cries really that are sweeping through the 2020 democratic establishment, what's your take on how that unrolls going forward? is it akin to republicans who have said abolish the irs, kind of knowing that ultimately taxes were never going to stop being collected? or is it something that speaks to a potential reality down the road? >> no, my take on this is that this growing movement which is increasingly as the clips show becoming mainstream, it reflects like such profound disenchantment with the role of this agency. some people see the calls to abolish i.c.e. as really a flat out call to end the agency. others see it -- other progressives see it as more of a starting point for a broader

discussion about the role of the agency. here are the facts. it is a fact that i.c.e. has unleashed tremendous harm among latino and immigrant communities. i.c.e. also sweeps up hundreds of u.s. citizens who cannot prove with papers on them that they are indeed citizens. so, this is an agency that has done a lot of damage and that, i think on the progressive side of the party, the swiftness of this movement going mainstream reflects that. i.c.e. also sweeps up hundreds of u.s. citizens who cannot prove with papers on them that they are indeed citizens. so, this is an agency that has done a lot of damage and that, i think on the progressive side of the party, the swiftness of this movement going mainstream reflects that. so, to me it's more than just, you know, calls to abolish the irs. what i'm hearing a lot of is the push back on the right saying without i.c.e. we'll have open borders and there will be no immigration enforcement. whereas that is a misrepresentation of the issue

because i.c.e. does not handle our borders. that's the role of the border patrol, customs and border protection, so we can have a strong border and we can have a new agency handling interior enforcement. interior enforcement is the job of i.c.e. >> john harwood, the kind of politics around this and the discrepancy between some of the younger alexandra cortez. i'm taking to hillary clinton that you don't insist on a policy that isn't going to become law, and bernie sanders making it idealism saying we have to do all these things. it seems to me that the young -- the energy in the party is with, you know, the idealism. >> it is, but this is one area where i think the fact that you don't have a singular leader of the democratic party right now is an advantage. presidential nominees and presidents define their parties. and so when you have members of congress, there are a whole lot of them.

i doubt that nancy pelosi and chuck schumer are going to make abolishing i.c.e. a core democratic issue in this campaign, and so the fact that a few people are calling for this and rallying progressives around that, i don't think it has the same kind of potential that the president's talking about, to cast the entire party as the radical left. i just don't see that happening. >> alexis, let's not forget there is from what we can tell 2000 or so children who are separated from their families, and this really does seem to be -- abolish i.c.e. had been something activists had been using as a hashtag and focused on, but it really exploded into the mainstream after those child separation tz. >> right, because they think this is an issue that moves the democratic base in a way we haven't seen in a while. abolish i.c.e. is a perfect antithesis trump supporters chant to this day even though

he's not running for reelection. among this revved uprising grassroots activist base in the democratic party. if they think they can use them, saying democrats are calling for open borders, i think it will be hard for them to make the argument that you can have strong borders and abolish i.c.e. a senior democratic source said no one means this in a literal sense. the source said they mean it, to abolish i.c.e. is symbolic. the cultural argument of what is going on, whether it's children being separated or the president calling for deportations. it might not lead to the actual abolition of i.c.e. >> idealistic but not necessarily practical. >> right. >> raul, there was a memo that went out from the spanish caucus, there was an argument it might be better for everybody if we cooled it down and instead focus on our practical immigration laws and not the enforcers, so to speak. what did you make of that memo? >> i did see the story about the memo. to me it sort of reflects the caucus has maybe not wrapped their collective mind around how to deal with this issue which has come up so quickly.

among this revved up sort of base within the democratic party. but republicans think that they can use this against them, as your guest earlier acknowledged, saying that democrats are calling for open borders. i think it will be hard for them to make the argument that you can have strong borders and abolish i.c.e. but at the end of the day, no one means this so the source said in a literal sense. the source said they mean it when they say to abolish i.c.e., it's more of symbolic, right? the cultural argument of what's going on, whether it's children being separate order president calling for deportations. so i think it might not lead to the actual abolition of i.c.e. >> not necessarily practical. >> right. >> there was a memo that went out from the congressional hispanic caucus that essentially made the argument that hey, it might be better for everybody if he we cooled it down and instead focused on our actual immigration laws and not the enforcers, so to speak. what did you make of that memo? >> when i saw -- i did see the story about the memo. to me it sort of reflects that the caucus has maybe not wrapped their collective mind around how to deal with this issue, which has come up so quickly. but i would say that my sense is that this movement, it's real.

it's not a sort of a theoretical call like abolish i.c.e. just in the sense of pushing back on trump. and when many people are calling to abolish i.c.e., they're not saying to do away with any interior immigration enforcement. they are saying the agency as we know it should either be reformed, the duties should be given to gnaw entity, or there should be some type of radical restructuring of the agency. it doesn't seem that anyone is saying we shouldn't do immigration enforcement which is to a certain extent necessary in this country. >> raul reyes, thank you very much for your perspective on this. >> thank you. >> i really appreciate it. just ahead, the supreme court, mid terms and a shocking fall from leadership. it's an interesting time to be a democrat. in my next hour, i'm joined by two high profile candidates, ben jealous and jason kander, who is running for mayor of kansas city. we're back after this. and that's why exxonmobil scientists think it's not small at all. energy lives here.

welcome back. less than a month after president trump's historic

summit with kim jong-un, u.s. intelligence officials have confirmed to nbc news that north korea is increasing fuel production for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites across the country. one official put it bluntly, quote, there is absolutely unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the united states. jen harwood, the president just, let's see, june 13th said, quote, there is no longer a nuclear threat from north korea, end quote. >> that's ridiculous, and he -- we're now discovering and it's being made plain that it was ridiculous. and the real question is this going -- is this revelation going to prove destabilizing to this whole situation. the president went there, was operating, it appeared under the illusion that they were going to denuclearize. then when north korea said out loud, no, we're not. then he canceled the summit, then he rescheduled it. they took pictures. they put out a piece of paper that really didn't say anything

at all. >> then we canceled our military exercises with south korea. >> we canceled our military exercises. he came home and said everybody, sleep safer because they're going to totally denuclearize, and they've already begun. that's not true. if in fact the president now connects to reality and sees that that's not happening, is he then going to blow up at chairman kim. >> no pun intended. >> and are we going to have a hostility? who knows. >> okay. john, alexi, stay with me because just ahead, michael steele and stephanie schriock are going to join me on set. plus, the "kasie dc" back with another live from washington. this morning the president

is up against his own deadline. he's given himself a week to term who you will nominate to replace supreme court justice kennedy. plus, new reporting that north korea is pushing ahead with its nuclear program. u.s. intelligence agencies believe the rogue nation is increasing its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites. thousands of people across the country take to the streets protesting the trump administration's immigration policies. this as president trump praises i.c.e. and border patrol. ♪ good